The Greyhound
by GashouseGables
Summary: Dr and Mr Esme and Carlisle Platt set sail aboard the woman-Captained vessel, The Greyhound. They aim for a barely known world with pregnant Isabella and her husband Michael. Bringing them two dubious 'siblings' who are financing the trip. But there are sirens in the sky and ensnared fae in the crew, and no map detailed enough to show exactly where they'll land.
1. Once Upon A Time

_Like elves and fairies in a ring,  
Enchanting all that you put in. _

_Macbeth, Act 4_

* * *

The Etherium did not stir for the ventures of one woman. Bella knew the cliffs were not the safest place to be; not when a magnetic storm swirled above the town. This sleepy, quiet little town - where surprise was a surprise and their name entered no particularly great tale.

"_People get taken in the storms_." They said. She didn't believe them; it was too fantastic for this little place. She only wanted to read somewhere beautiful.

"We meet again." The voice was boyish, and pleased, and Bella finds herself turning to smile at Edward, as he takes a corner of the blanket and sits beside her.

"Aren't you afraid of the weather?" She teases, closing her book and discarding it, as he tilts his head very far upwards, swaying on one arm much closer to her.

He hums thoughtfully as the back of his scalp rests against her shoulder lightly. The touch zaps her skin like the static clouds above. "What would concern me?" he asks quietly. His looks were chiselled and gentle, and Bella never knew that any power would take such pain-staking time to create every sweet feature.

"Miles and miles above our heads. No, I find myself very taken with it." His eyes slide over to her, and she falls into his shining green eyes.

"As do I." She feels herself murmur.


	2. alone and palely loitering

The Intergalactic Light Ship Greyhound set sail today. Noted for having mostly women on the crew, and its strange figurehead; a ghastly raging mouth of sharp teeth, in the shape of a woman, screaming to the Etherium. _Doomed to become a ghost-ship_, was said of it. They were taking a few passengers up to a rather lesser-known planet.

"You'll note our efficiency, I'm sure." Captain Maria said, striding up the gangway with Esme Platt trotting along at her heels. The doctor kept pace smoothly and nodding her admiration.

"A very fine-looking crew, and ship, Captain." She agreed, smiling pleasantly.

Maria preened ever so slightly; she was a youth to most, and the maternal air of the older woman soothed a small part of her. "Tell me," Maria said, stopping at the helm of the ship to speak with Esme, "why do you wish to travel to the Quill Cluster? Are you hoping to see the snow? Or perhaps meet the fauna?" There was some humor in her tone; the forests in the planet were wild and full of creatures.

Esme smiled, "My husband and I are travelling with a woman who would like to give birth in the presence of a childhood friend of hers. He is a native of the place." She explained.

Maria's eyebrows rose, "A lot of trouble for a child." She murmured.

"Well, she is a very exceptional woman," Esme said, and Maria got the impression that Esme had purposefully misunderstood that Maria had meant the baby. "her husband and his close friend are paying for the whole trip and he's over-joyed to have such an adventure." She explained. There was a laugh and a young man walked up to them. He had a boyish face that was not entirely comely, his face still round and cheeks lightly freckled; he was altogether plain and unassuming, but his bright happiness made him nearly handsome.

"Our last trip before we must settle down and raise our family." He explained; chest puffed out as he spoke. He seemed to be the quite pleased to talk about his pregnant wife, and there was a spark in his eyes as he eyed the twinkling stars.

Maria doubted any talk about his up-coming family would interest her and clicked her heels together sharply. "Well, you don't seem like trouble and you've paid well, we'll be glad to have you all on board." She said, turning to Esme to incline her head. She watched the way the man looked about them and swayed to the roll of the ship. He was a lad that would be prone to seasickness, Maria had had plenty of experience with land-folk to tell.

Esme, unknowing of Maria's train of thought, only took the man's offered arm and smiled. The doctor may not be sea-faring any longer, but she knew when they were dismissed. "Thank you, Captain." She added over her shoulder.

* * *

Edward looked over the ornate, if small, ship, and gave a disinterested sniff.

"To some nugatory corner of the cosmos to deliver your prize." He told the woman next to him. Rosy-cheeked and heavily pregnant, she looks at Edward with wide-eyes, and gave a tight nod. As though trying to cheer him, she musters up some weak sort of smile. The man only sighs at her, he turns on his heel and strides away, leaving her to wait for her husband on the pier alone.

"Be careful with that, won't you?" A slightly middle-aged, more than slightly handsome man said, laugh lines deeply pronounced as he smiles at one of _The Greyhound's_ crew, lugging a small, plain chest in her arms. "Some of my wife's rarest instruments lay inside." He explains. The woman nods, and stalks up the plank, more mindful of how she swayed. Appeased, the man goes to the pregnant woman, smiling and taking her arm to lead her up the gangway.

* * *

It was dusk when they were ready to leave, and while they were the only crew setting sail at such an hour, they were also the only crew made almost entirely of women and were usually scarce on the docks at any other time.

The first mate, Nettie, eyes the guests closely, lined up in front of her for her assignments. She seemed either distrustful of them or squinting hard in the glare of the sunset. "So, we have Esme and Carlisle Platt," she said, eyes on an older couple that looked almost suspiciously harmless as they both smiled at her, the Doctor and the man from the pier. "Isabelle and Michael Newton," the baby-faced man waved at her, and the woman wrapped up in his arms ducked her head in embarrassment, hands on her rounded belly, "Edward and Alice Fork." She finished, and neither of the last two acknowledged her, one was a short slight thing, the other the disinterested man from before. "Three couples?" She asked Dr Platt.

Before she could answer, one of the Forks did, "_Siblings_, actually." Alice said with emphasis as she glanced over to one of the crew, a young man named Jasper who didn't look at her.

"Lovely." Said Nettie with heavy sarcasm. She sniffed and nodded to a woman waiting nearby. "Please follow the crewmate to your bunks. We suggest you retain yourselves there through the launch of the ship.

"We'll see you in the morning." She said, watching as they all shuffled off as told. Left with supervising the crew as they prepared to set sail, she grabbed at one of the men. "Find out who the hell these people are." She hissed at him, demeanour changing from stiff and stoic to something feline and liquid. "The last two in particular unsettle me."

* * *

The following days were largely uneventful. Michael became heavily motion sick, opting to stay in bed and suffer through the rock of the winds, his wife steered clear for fear of joining him. Alice flirted with Jasper, who never spoke to her, but never-the-less smiled politely and was sure to make time to listen to her. Her brother alternated between keeping to himself and checking on a heavily pregnant Isabelle in Michael's stead.

"How's your old friend holding up?" One of the crew, a boyishly charming man called Emmett, broad as he was gleeful, asked Edward one morning. Edward blinked at him, seeming to wait clarification. "Michael, Mr Newton?" He prompted.

Edward laughed lightly and falsely. "He is hardly a friend, though I imagine he's doing just terribly." He said, nonchalant, and Emmett nodded once.

Edward was a handsome man in an uncomfortable way. He seemed finely made, angular and slender; from the tips of his fingers to the angelic bow of his mouth. But he would have better suited porcelain. For he was cold and hard and bored with everything. A dandy, something completely out of place on a hard-working ship. He oiled his skin and his hands were long and soft. He wore soft calfskin breeches, and all his vest were either embroidered cotton or painted silk. Emmett feels brutish and coarse in his presence, so he mutters a goodbye before going off to complete his duties.

Edward watched him go with narrowed eyes, planning to leave the glare of the suns himself, but was waylaid by Alice, who storms over and takes his arm in a fit of ladylike decency. "I'm very frustrated!" She declared.

Edward did not put too much stock in the grip making his very bones creak. "Why is that, _sister dear_?" He asked, a slight shade of mockery on the last two words.

"I like to think I am a pleasing fellow," Alice said, "and here that nasty – Zorellian jelly worm – is –" she growled in high frustration, "who cannot stand to speak a word to me!" She huffed out.

Edward sneered at her tantrum, "He is a mute. I heard the cook say the boy's speechlessness has gotten him into trouble more often than not." He said. Alice paused, visibly shocked by the information, before dropping the man's arm and walking away, making small hiccups of shock as she went. Edward watched her go with eyes as slitted as before.

While they had spoken, Emmett stands to attention in front of first mate Nettie, curled up in her armchair. "_Not_ an old friend?" Nettie said shrilly, alarmed disbelief high in her voice. Emmett nodded grimly; his boyish charming face marred with anxiety. "Find out how those 'Fork' siblings know the rest of the passengers." Nettie ordered him, "There's something off about them. An obviously false name and not even friends? I don't like how this is coming about." She muttered while she waved the crewman out of her cabin.

* * *

The passengers ate at different times from the crew, at breakfast it was understandable, the crew's duties started early and ran long through. Except at dinner where the small mess hall was filled with loud talk and heavy foods.

But Alice was never one to miss a sunrise, whichever sun was passing them by, much to the disgust of her brother, who would then complain loudly when she slept through lunchtime. But today like every day, she got up early and ate breakfast with the crew, though she spoke to them very little and ate even less and sat out on the railing and watched the winds.

Jasper was setting up ropes, and Alice watched him closely. He wore the clothes of a labourer, brown trousers and huge greying shirt with thick work boots.

She felt positively dainty around him; though her pathetic height and tiny features made her dainty around anyone but children. Next to a child she seemed odd, so she avoided it for fear of giving herself away. She'd been described as a pretty doll more than once, and though she was a grown woman, she did her best to prove them right. Immaculately dressed in frills and tule with her hair in curls pressed flat against her head, she could take on a graceful stillness that unnerved any who observed her. Now though, she crosses and uncrosses her ankles as she watched the sailor from her perch.

She thought he was handsome, and she liked watching him. This was not a common opinion; his hair was ravaged, limp, fried locks that resembled straw. Moreover, his skin browned and wrinkled from prolonged exposure to multiple suns and atmospheres made him look ancient. His flesh seemed to sit ill on his bones; stretched and sagging in odd places, not at all forming the common muscles a sailor would build. His eyes were sunken in and often glassy; the skin around his face peeled often. It was as though all these features on one face were all wrong; he simply wasn't shaped in any nicely way.

"You can't talk, or you won't talk to me?" She asks him when he glances up at her. He shrugs and smiles lightly. "I'm very interesting. You're missing out." She continues, knocking her feet lightly together as she sits over him.

Jasper doesn't reply, only continues to make knots in the rope. Looking down at his crouched form, Alice's expression was almost serene in how love-struck she seemed. But the look melted away, replaced by something unnatural and brutal.

The boy doesn't look up and realise this, as the young woman's face begins to shift, intense and passive all at once. Her little features twist into something haunting, terrifying, eyes almost glowing, and she doesn't look away from him. She rather looked as though she wished to swallow him up.

* * *

They were coming into a fierce storm, the remnants of the Dalnacreich Meteor burnt up and broken. But the meteor proved too large to burn up, instead propelled entirely, drifting to them on the winds. Rather more commonly known as a meteor shower.

Or so Jasper told Maria, through a drawing of an angry intergalactic turmoil with roiling winds that he'd smudged into the floor of her office with some ash from within his pocket.

She looked at the picture with distain, an emotion doubled when she set eyes on the man who drew it. "The stars remain bright and merry and I don't appreciate this mess." She said heavily. Jasper rolled his eyes, throwing his face to one side and staring at the wall a moment. Nettie, standing to attention next to her, exchanged a disinterested glance with Captina.

Finally, he reached out and began to draw again; using the tips of his fingers and his palm and knuckles to etch another picture, below the ship. It was a human figure, leaping from the ship. He drew a human-shape above the sails, so the figure was leaping straight into the floating open arms in the stars. The grasping being had no legs, just one long curved fin.

"_Sirens!_" Nettie barked; face twisted into a snarl. Jasper nods, an eyebrow raised at Maria, who had frozen. Nettie, though, was up and stalking towards the door. "We need to change course immediately."

But Jasper shakes his head, using one knuckle to leave a smudge of ash on his own forehead, a dot right between his eyes.

Nettie slams her hand on the door instead of opening it and curses. "They've already caught sight of us." She mutters darkly.

"When?" Maria snapped, eyes heated and teeth clenched, looking at Jasper intently. He dragged two strokes into the wood. "Two days to prepare then." Maria said with a nod.

Nettie growls; "That's when we'll hit the Dalnacreich Cloud - the magnetic interference puts us at the disadvantage!" She throws up her hands in frustration.

Standing and breathing in slowly, Captina exhaled as she turned to her first mate. "Alert the crew, but not the passengers, we don't need a panic. The pregnant one's man might faint." She said. Nettie nodded and left the room.

She turned to Jasper. "The Fork siblings, what are they?" She asked him sharply.

Jasper rubbed a little more ash around the siren he had drawn earlier. Out and out from it's torso; a pair of black wings. "Angels?" She breathed, eyes wide. Jasper shook his head, and drew a few small alterations, the tail became two long grossly elongated legs, and the arms were lengthened too. It looked more like an exaggeration than a person. Like a shadow stretched out at sunset.

But Maria knew exactly what it was, she hisses like a cat, and he freezes in response.

"You'd better hope your own kind doesn't recognise you." She spat, her face dark and angry. Jasper keeps his head ducked. "I don't need to tell you what will happen." She added, waving him away in dismissal.

Jasper doesn't look at her as he turns and leaves. He doesn't look up from the floor as he heads to his bunk – an empty supply closet he'd curl up in to get away from humans – and he doesn't see the beady black eyes peering at him through the ship's railing.

* * *

The next day, First Mate Nettie was barking orders from the early hours of the morning. Or as close as morning got in space. The commotion had woken the Doctor's husband, Carlisle Platt, and he came out to investigate.

"Hello, First Mate Nettie," he said pleasantly. If there could only be one word to describe Carlisle, it was pleasant. His happy manners and unshakable calm made for an excellent bedside balm to any of his wife's patients. Nettie barely spared him a nod, watching closely the women under her command. "Tell me; are we to expect some sort of disruption on this trip? I don't believe the ship was so active so soon before." He prompted, looking at the action with mild interest.

Nettie casts him a sideways look, but remains tight-lipped, only telling him that there was a meteor shower soon.

"A storm? Why, there's hardly a hint of static or magnetism! If my father saw a day like this in the skies, we'd not see him until he'd collected enough energy from several suns." He said, smiling and nodding at any of the crew that glance curiously at him. He had not been seen much about the ship, as he had been tending to Isabelle and her swollen feet.

Even stoic as she was, her pupils dilated from their slitted state at the man's words. "Your father sailed also?" She asked.

Carlisle nods, "Yes, one of many in a modest space-port town." He explains with a sigh, continuing when Nettie's mouth twitches upwards; the closest to a smile he'd seen from her. "My wife and I met when she came to our port, actually …" he shook himself from his old memories, "in any case, if there is a storm, I think I'll give you my watch." He says, searching through the pockets of his trousers, of which there were six different compartments.

Nettie snorts and shakes her head, her long black hair flowing passively through the movement. "You won't want to make a wager on this." She says darkly, mind full of condemned singing and drowning sailors.

"Nonsense! A trade." He says, and nods as she perks up slightly. "See, this watch was given to me by a young Cyborg I came across many years ago." He pulls out a finely made wristwatch; silver, set with navy blue gems around the rim and depicting several constellations. Nettie admires it with keen interest.

"Like the ol' John Silver?"

"A cyborg as well, I suppose." Carlisle inclined his head. "I traded him my father's watch for it, and now I'll trade you." He puts the watch back into his pocket. "_If_ there is a storm, of course." He adds jovially.

Nettie, enthralled by the item and the story behind it, nods with satisfaction. "So be it, doctor's husband." She agrees, and they shake on it firmly before he bids her goodbye.

* * *

It was dark in the small cabin the Platt's were assigned. Carlisle thought it was cosy and Esme had little complaints herself. They lay in bed, lazing until they passed closer to some sun and its shine. He had come back to bed after his conversation with the First Mate.

"A storm, my love, you're certain?" Esme asks softly, her hand running up and down his arm as she watches the spread of the stars from the small circular window.

"As it was spoken to me, darling." He says softly, eyes on her as her face was turned away. "I'll trade her my watch if she's right." He adds lightly, chuckling a little.

She smiles, the shadows in the room making her teeth sharper and whiter than seemed humanly possible. "Say good-bye to it now, then. There are sirens approaching."

Carlisle, for once, stops smiling even a little. He was compelled to flick the image on the little window, spooked by his own imaginings. Now it depicted an image of underwater currents; as though they were at sea. "… Are we in any danger?" he asks, eyes darting between her and the window, as though a ghastly face would press itself against it and begin to croon.

She shakes her head, loose auburn curls shifting on the pillows. "We shouldn't be." She looks at him, her eyes flashing gold for just a moment. "Keep my trunk closed tightly, love, I wouldn't want those little girls finding it." She added, before leaving the bed and going to dress for the day.

Standing himself, Carlisle strides over to the small, plain chest he had the crew carry so carefully. He looks at it tucked tightly in the corner of their room, and kneels down to lay a hand on it, fingers tightening possessively. His face settles into something that seems to rarely lay on his face; it twists his laugh lines and throws his eyes into shadow.

* * *

Isabelle, known more often as Bella, was enjoying this little trip into the sky. She was excited, desperately excited, to get to her friend before the baby's birth. Even with her husband ill as a dog, and Edward's habit of darting about, she still tried her best to enjoy herself in little ways. Sunning herself and watching the swirling constellations, the constant ebb and flow of the cosmos in a changing purple-shining-black-red hue and avoiding her room where her husband lay ill, were some of her favourite times.

Alice avoided her, and to an extent so did Esme, but Carlisle remained her friend, and Michael was constant in everything, including his love for her.

Now, though, as he sleeps off his motion sickness, Isabelle sits and waits for Edward to show up. He slips into the room silently, eyes flickering and taking in his surroundings.

He walks over to her and kneels down, eyes on her extended belly. Sighing, she lifts her shirt a little, and allows him to lay his long hand flat against her taunt skin. His touch makes her shiver. They stay like that for several moments, before he nods once, removes his hand and stands.

"The Doctor has nothing for that horrible retching he does all day?" Edward asks, his lip curling in disgust and dissuading any notion that he speaks out of concern.

Defensive, Bella shakes her head, brown hair pulled up into a small bun. "Unfortunately, not. But he's determined to see himself through." She says loyally.

Edward sneers, "Impressive." He snorts, and leaves the room, nodding to Esme, who steps in in his place. She stays by the door, keeping it propped open as she watches Edward leave.

When he was truly gone, Esme closes the door tightly and looks at Bella intently.

"What did he say?" She asks her, her tone almost accusing. Bella was mildly wounded by the loss of friendship and trust between them, but she knows the blame lies on her, and what she was asking Esme to risk.

"Nothing but to complain of Michael's illness." She replies, still miffed at the man's uncaring attitude. She had once thought Edward above reproach and his constant dismissal only a testament to his superior intellect. But now she was older and wiser and not very in love with him and saw him for what he was; a cruel thing, only here with her out of obligation to her encumbered state. He must have become sick and tired of her mortal form - and so was she!

"Good." Esme said, and presses a small vial in her hand, the liquid inside thick and yellow. "Here, hurry." She hisses

Nodding, Bella brought out the small piece of bread from her sleeve, the traditional maternity shirt billowing around her as she pours the liquid quickly onto the morsel of food. When it was soaking in, she stuffs it into her mouth, chewing fast and gasping at the wretched taste. It goes down her throat with a burn as Esme takes the vial and tucks it away, eyes swivelling about as though they would be caught in any second.

Groaning as she finishes, Bella holds onto her stomach and pants as her insides twist and pulse. After a few moments, the feeling fades, and she sighs in relief.

Esme looks her over, probing her neck and belly with her fingers, before nodding.

"This is the seventh month; the baby won't survive more than ten of these doses." Esme reminds her firmly, and Bella nods weakly, as though any movement at all was difficult, her energy drained. Esme looks at her pale, sweating face, and sighs softly. "Be careful, little one." She says, voice both grave and fond.

"Ah! Here you are!" It's Carlisle, cheerful as always as he brings in some treated water for Michael and a few wet rags. "How are we?" He asks, rousing the younger man and prompting Michael to groan terribly, tutting as he dabs at the man's sweating neck. He goes to Bella, looks at her pallor, and does the same, wiping her face and humming a little. With Carlisle's calming presence, the heavy spell over the room is broken and both women only smile politely as Esme makes to leave.

Bella grabs her hand before she can go. "Thank you, Esme." She says, her grateful, horse tone ignored by Carlisle and unnoticed by Mike, who begins to retch again.

Esme squeezes her hand gently. "Stay safe."

* * *

The day before the sirens were to attack, Maria gives out a small announcement to crew and customers.

"We will be bunking in the hull tonight, as a safety precaution from the oncoming meteor shower," She said, eyes to the calm purple skies.

Mike, slightly woozy but up on his feet for a rare occasion, looks up as well and chuckles slightly. "Will there really be a storm, star-sailor's boy?" He asks, looking at Carlisle. Carlisle nods his head sadly, but Mike only looks surprised, glancing around the sky as though a crackle of static will confirm these suspicions. But there were none. Isabelle pets the arm he had around her to quiet him.

"I didn't pay to spend the night in some hole full of sailors." Edward said, distrust in his voice as he looks at Maria. Baring her teeth into some sort of grin, she nods to him.

"Our guests are not _required_ to be below deck. In fact, in the case of you and your sister, I'm sure you'll prefer your own rooms." She said, voice silky and sly.

Alice looks at her curiously, before smiling prettily. "I'm so glad you agree!" She gushes and looks towards Jasper. "You'll be going into that dark little place, won't you?" He makes a fist and shakes it side to side, and with it shakes his head in disagreement. She frowns deeply. "I'm sure you'll be much safer there." She tells him.

He throws his head back, causing her to start in surprise, and opens his mouth wide. For a moment he stands, there, shaking, until it's realised that he was laughing.


	3. The Strath of Dalnacreich

The storm grew, slow and steady. The smallest flecks of stone-dust, at first, that prompted the passengers indoors and the crew to don their gas masks. Carlisle watched silently as the dust disintegrated within moments of swirling past the window, absorbed under the sheer pressure and vacuum of space. To see it at all spoke of a very real, recent explosion. The dust soon after became little flecks of matter, no bigger than and strongly resembling gravel.

Then in the following hours the shower of pebbles turned into larger, much more hazardous fist-sized rocks. Everyone on the ship was tense, and when it finally came down to a dire need to navigate huge, spinning meteorite pieces, the singing started.

"Get below deck!" Maria roared, and many of them did so. Several stayed above to continue to steer the ship; Nettie, Jasper, a wisp of a moth-thing named Lucy. As well as Charlotte – a treeish creature with three eyes and Peter, who more resembled a stout green shrub. Along with Captain Maria herself. Alice and Edward had also stayed above, but they had retired to their room.

Eerie, haunting and beautiful beyond words, the crew all tensed as they heard the singers coming closer.

"Get those jaws off the floor - we have a storm!" Maria barked. "Furl the sails I won't have my solar panels shot through by meteorites!" They scurried to comply. Jasper nearly flung himself about the deck, his speed almost uncanny, as though if he moved fast enough, he would leave his dry, sagging skin behind.

* * *

Emmett peers through the porthole in the door.

"You wouldn't want to do that, dear …." Esme calls to him softly. Emmett turns to her and offers a tight, almost apologetic smile.

"He's sort of a friend, that boy," he said, mentioning to Jasper, "not much a talker but he's never done wrong by me. I hate to see him out there in the wind. He's not very stout, I ought to be out there with him." Emmett explains gently, glancing again out the window.

"Please, my good man, don't long for anything right now, hm?" Esme lays a hand firmly on his shoulder, "This isn't a storm where little wishes survive." She says, leaving him by the window to his worries.

"_In the sky and across the empyrean …._" The breathy voice called. Jasper stops pulling the ropes when he hears it, and he looks to Maria manning the wheel.

He begins to jump and wave his arms at her, until she looks at him in a fury.

"What?!" She snaps. His fingers stab at his throat, his face beseeching. "How dare you! My only duty is to keep this ship sailing, and _you_ think I'll relinquish anything!?" Maria lashes the steer to the railing around it, storming down to him and grabbing him by his dusty shirt, dragging the man down to look at her. "If this ship goes down – you go down with it, and you will not have the voice to scream." She promises with a hiss, before flinging him away from her and dashing back to her post.

Jasper refused to move, glaring at her and finally, finally, when the eerie melody gets closer, he turns away, and continues to secure the backstay, his posture defeated.

Alice watches from her room, fuming. "This song is terrible!" She snaps, glaring at where her brother only reads on the bed. "I'm so _bored_!" She added, simpering.

He looks up to sneer, and for a scant moment, in a wild rock of the ship, he looks an ungodly terror. It only lasts an instant, before he simply looks irritated. "What would you have us do? Join those solar-soaked girls outside?" He suggests sarcastically, though it did not seem as though he was referring to the crew of The ILS Greyhound. Alice huffs and crosses her arms, not responding to him.

Jasper was primed like a beast as the singing drew nearer. He knew it was only a matter of time ….

* * *

He scans the skies and is the first to see their doom.

Crawling over the meteor bits and swimming through the winds with long, shiny tails, shining white incisors biting the sky, eyes too large and with not white, but black sclera.

One lone hand shot up and grips onto the railing of the ship. Jasper backs away slowly. Another hand joins the first, and a glowing and terrible woman pulls herself up and slithers over the railing.

She wears the scrap of a ragged, thick fabric; remnants of a ship's sail. Her hair whispers about in gold strings as though submerged in water. Her entire body floats as though affected by the same. Or unaffected, unable to be properly grounded by the artificial gravity. Her mouth is bright red, and hangs open, showing sharp black teeth. Like the fangs of an animal but placed incorrectly into a vaguely human mouth.

Maria spots her as the siren fans slowly up to Jasper. "_They're here!_" She yells. Nettie throws her head back and gives a roar like a lion, and the slight Lucy grips onto the lower topsail yard to keep watch over the solar sails. She grips onto her necklace with a brittle, feathery hand; the magnetic beads attempt to yank themselves from her neck to comply with the complete overturn of the magnetic field.

It was the force of the sirens. All creatures born between the planets and stars, in the inky echo of space. Gravity did not pull them down with unforgiving fingers, air brought them no life. They were made to fly through the winds on wings and fins and never to touch solid ground. Some said that stronger fae were capable of powerful mimicry - able to don a human mask and walk among mortals.

In the skies around them, the storm stops. The largest meteor rocks, capable of crushing the ship entirely; yet it wavers and pushes against the shift in the magnetic field. The presence of the sirens warps the artificial gravity, bending it around them as a temporary shield, but leaving the occupants without the use of their feet as they float under zero-G. Only under this siege does the ship remain untouched, in a tight circle of antagonised calm.

The siren watches Jasper, who grips to the railing, his feet limp above him, and waits. She then turns her head, dismissive, and undulates past him. He watches her go, as she inspects the ship.

"_I want you, my lovely … Want to bring you to your grave …"_ The woman sings, her voice sweet, and breathy and terrible. Her iris so violently blue, they were violet, and they swept intently over the deck.

* * *

A commotion erupts in the hull.

"What was that! Did you hear that!" One of the crew yells, and she's unceremoniously tackled to the ground.

Esme screams, "Cover your ears! Cover them now!" And no one questions her.

Carlisle glances at Michael, slouched next to him and vaguely green, whose hands were busy pressed over his ears then the sick-bucket gripped between his knees. "This is a time that calls for beeswax." He tells the boy, who can't hear him.

The woman circles past Jasper again, and his eyes track her carefully, his whole lean body tensed and ready.

_"Come with me, my darling … the skies are only for the … _brave." The last word was only spoken, without the breathy sing-song whisper, in the human voice of a woman. She turns back to Jasper and launches herself on him.

With a piercing howl, they both soar upwards; the artificial gravity ripples - the magnetic field settles. All at once; the meteor shower continues. A great rock hurtles towards them again; almost as large as the Greyhound itself. As Jasper had nothing to hold but the siren, they are both flung from the ship by the rush of the winds, struggling at the very bounds of the man-made sphere of gravity. As the force pushes on Jasper but rejects the siren entirely; leaving them perfectly in mid-air.

"He's gone! Man the decks!" Maria screams, and the scarce crew from before rush back.

The two creatures grapple, dangerously close to the solar sails, snarling in each other faces. They catch against the staysail rigging, and the peak of the sail tears away, flopping uselessly, the solar panels giving a pathetic flicker before they fade.

"The solar sails!" One of the crew curses in the hull. "Those damned sirens will destroy our power and there'll be no surviving a meteor shower on a powerless ship!"

Another yelled; "Get to the furnace! We need to be ready to deactivate the gravity and use the winds!"

"Ready at the capstan!"

The crew were jolted into action. A small team went to the ship's pump to keep a reading on the power supply, while several others went to the capstan to ensure that if their Captina ordered, they'd be at the ready to hoist the foresail, running the risk of ruining the solar panels to get an extra boost of speed.

It left the passengers with only a scant few of the crew still remaining to wait for orders at the door.

* * *

Emmett still stood, watching with deeply worried eyes at the fight above.

"I'm trying not to want for anything, ma'am." He says, looking over to where Esme watches the fury with a careful eye. "I know what it takes, to fly the skies."

Above the deck, Jasper struggles still, unable to fling himself away from her and be slammed back to the ship's deck as the gravity presses on him, and she unable to swing them both out of the gravity field, into the crush of the winds that would only kill one. With his knife, he slashes through her arm. Like liquid thrown upward, her golden blood blobs in the air in the knife's wake. With a scream, she twists away from him, but Jasper has another problem yet.

In their struggle, she had managed to lash him by the neck to a rope from the topmast's rigging. Free from the gravity-bending siren, the artificial force will send him hurtling to his own hanging. Jasper flails as he begins to fall.

"No!" It's Emmett, rushing out among the cries of the rest below deck. He pays them no heed, skidding in the turbulent rocking of the ship, and scaling the rigging towards Jasper.

But at that same moment, to avoid the giant stone, Maria turns the ship completely sideways, and the hull narrowly misses being torn open on the jagged rock. The massive swing throws Jasper straight onto the solar sail and claws up the rope around his neck to grip the mast securely.

The siren screams, robbed of her murder, her eyes flashing purple in fury. In the gravity she twists and turns, lightly propelled away from all objects that adheres to the force that cannot in turn touch her.

Emmett reaches him, grabbing the smaller man, and brings out a knife, attempting to free Jasper of his noose. "EMMETT! GET BACK BELOW DECK YOU STUPID FOOL!" Maria screams, and the crew were unable to get to him; Esme slammed the door shut and kept them below deck. Those that were above deck were too desperate to keep the ship upright to save him.

A roiling rock of the ship had sent them free of the largest rock, but flying forward on a dangerous hilt that threatened to knock Maria from her steering wheel. The massive force of the meteor shower renders the gravity incredibly thin. It slips Jasper further, now the only thing keeping him from the siren and the skies is the vice-grip he has on the mast; all his long limbs wrapped around it as the abused wood creaks ominously. Emmett throws his entire considerable weight against the thinner man, and hacks at the rope urgently.

Just moments in the wake of the rock, there are three more breeches in the gravity barrier. Three more figures that must have been hiding in the meteor-piece's wake, pale and terrible, with gaping red mouths. Different from the first; these three are longer, paler and lick the solar winds with long, forked tongues. Something of them older, and indefinitely more horrifying.

They do not pause. Eyes like headlamps, they rush the crew on deck. Charlotte clasps her giant vine-like arms around one of them and with Peter, struggles to dash her head against the railing. Another darts to Lucy, who just as quickly darts away, starting a desperate chase that covers the entirety of the deck. The very last looks to Maria, and doesn't move. The Captain holds the creature's dead stare, and sneers.

Jasper is left to silently gape at Emmett, and watch as the younger siren claws the air, head cocked to one side. He shakes his head wildly, and pushes Emmett away from him, face set into a disturbed soundless scream.

Emmett ignores him, face grim and mouth set in determination, as he finally cuts through the rope. He shouts in delight, before Jasper jerks away from him.

* * *

In her room, Alice screams as she watches, and grabs at the door handle, and screams again, this time in pain.

Alice rips herself away from the door, and looks at her palm, now burnt red and smoking slightly. Edward gets up and ushers her away from it, and they both look terribly furious and trapped.

Following Jasper's sudden movement, Emmett is frightened the slight man had just been knocked overboard, but he had been jerked _away_, not _over_.

Emmett looks up, and sees the man dangle by a fist in his collar, shocked; he had been ripped away by another of the terrible beasts. Jasper struggles against the woman's grip, but she isn't affected, only throwing him to the ground, and kicking him viciously in the head with her bare foot. Jasper's head bounces, unresponsive, and he doesn't get up.

Emmett, still gripping the mast with his knife aching in his frozen hand, stands shakily, now truly realising the danger he's in.

The shortest siren approaches him slowly as he scrambles to his feet.

"_Drop that dagger, my love._" She coos. Emmett blinks, his eyes glazing over, and hurries to do so, and offers her a hand. She takes it, and draws him to her.

Maria, eyeing the siren that only waits down on the deck for her, grits her teeth and curses as Emmett slumps limply into the siren's loving arms, held there as she rocks them to and fro gently.

Lucy has managed to grab at one by the hair and slings them to the centre of the deck. Charlotte does something similar; grasping one by the foot and dragging her.

"Get ready!" Maria screams, and the crew on deck form a very wide circle, hands raised palms up. But they make no more movements, as the sirens hiss and screech.

* * *

Suddenly, there's a splintering sound, and the Fork cabin's door flies from its frame, landing with a slick scrape near the Captain at her post at the wheel.

Edward sets his foot down from his mighty kick and Alice storms out of the room, running down to the siren that had Jasper's body at her feet and Emmett in her arms. Alice's little face is twisted and sickening, and she looks like a goblin, her nose almost only two slits and her mouth wide and splitting at the corners.

With a growl that could be heard over the roar of the waves, Alice ignores the threatening shriek the siren gives, and punches her in the face.

"You horrid, ugly fish!" Alice screams, and bodily flings the woman behind her, looking down at Jasper. Emmett is taken with her, his shirt nearly ripped from his body by her claws.

"Now!" Nettie, who Alice had barrelled past, shouts from behind her. Alice spins around and sees her palms glowing blue.

With a short scream of alarm, Alice drops to the ground, onto Jasper's body, as a blast of bright blue, shaped almost like an arrow, shoots inches past her face. The inorganic blue arrow hits the first siren, still holding Emmett to her, and she howls, drawing them both away, towards the skies.

"Don't let her get away with him!" Maria yells, running down to join her crew. She makes the Hand Against the Evil Eye; pinky and thumb spread wide and from her three fingers held straight and together, a spark of blue fizzles and crackles.

With an opening in the ring of sirens; Nettie, Lucy and Maria take a sturdy stance and start to chant, blue energy swirling between them. Peter cowers on the floor, the gill-like slits of his neck pulsing, his face retching, as though he was chocking. Charlotte was hunched over him, but both, in the wake of this magic, seemed entirely overcome.

"Well fuck," Edward hisses, crouching low as he grips the railing outside his room. "They're witches."

Alice whimpers on the ground, and squeezes her eyes shut as the blue crackles and strikes out the sirens, like lightening above her.

The sirens scream and scurry over the edge of the ship, into the safety of the swirling debris. All but the one still desperately holding onto Emmett.

Maria roars and throws her hand like she was hurling a glowing purple rock, and the rock strikes the siren's face, shattering into nothing and she wails, dropping Emmett and leaping onto a passing hurtling meteor.

* * *

It was the lest of Dalnacreich, the pebbles trickling and bouncing harmlessly along the gravity field. They had breached the shower. Alice jumps to her feet, wasting no time scurrying to her brother's side as they back away slowly.

Panting, Maria looks at the women, and nods once. They'd won, this time.

"CREW! I want this entire ship scoured from stem-to-stern!" Maria throws open the doors as the crew comes spilling back on deck. "The passengers do not come outside until I'm sure those Zorellian-sky _worms_ are off my ship!" Maria barks.

Isabelle looks at the women in awe, and Esme and Carlisle fall back a little.

The crew does as commanded, swinging down the hull of the ship to ensure the sirens have not clung with the barnacle underneath.

Collating the answer to each sailor's search, not twenty minutes later, First Mate Nettie gives her Captain the all-clear.

With a nod, Maria allows the passengers onto the deck.

Bella struggles with her now-limp husband, floored by the constant rock of the meteors, the doctor and her husband follow slower.

"You're magic-users." Esme says softly, hiding just slightly behind her husband. "Spells and tricks instead of reason and logic." She added, her voice heavy with distrust.

Maria nods, shaking her from her face, and only shrugs. "We're sorry for misleading you. Perhaps you could make it up to us; and tell us why you brought two fae on board." She adds, one hand resting on her jutted hip, just above her cutlass and obscuring the burns on her palms.

Esme's lips tightened, and her gaze flickers over to where Edward and Alice stand, huddled together. "I told you," she said slowly, "they're friends, they're here to see the safe delivery of Isabelle's-"

"Bullshit!" Nettie snaps, chest heaving with exhaustion. "Fair folks are evil and greedy and wicked!"

"Enough!" Maria snaps, and the woman stops. "We don't have time for this." She hisses, and storms over to Jasper, who still lay unmoving. "Get up, I know you woke just before." She spits, and he shifts, his eyes opening in a glare, and he sits up smoothly, as though the blood running down his face were nothing but a paint spill. She turns to address the crew.

"We managed to scare the sirens off, _for now_, but they're claimed one of our people, and they'll be back to collect him." She explained, looking to Emmett' prone form, and then to Jasper. "How do we keep a siren away from their chosen victim?" She asks him.

He blinks, and then shrugs.

"'Keep him on land, where she will never dither, keep him on a bed of heather, let them ever wither. In three days, or five, or ten, you will have him back again.'" Everyone turned to where Carlisle stood, speaking softly.

"Explain your riddles, man!" Lucy snaps.

Carlisle smiles. "In my home village, we had all manner of fish. It was a rhyme we were taught as children; what to do if a siren ever kisses you." He says.

Nettie scowls. "There is no night and day in the sky." She says heavily. At that, Carlisle offers nothing.

Maria regards him heavily, "Will it work?" She asks.

"I know not; we never had sirens." He says, tone apologetic as he tucks his wife firmly under his arm.

Maria grunts and turns to the women who made her crew. "What say you?"

"It sounds probable." Charlotte hisses, rubbing her hands together gently to starve off the sting of her burns.

Lucy nods as well. "But the boy will have to keep watch." She says, nodding to Jasper, who scowls and looks away.

"What? All too eager to let one of your kind have their prize?" Nettie simpers, but Jasper refuses to heed her.

"Alright! Get Emmett into a bed. We don't have land and we can't reach any port for a week …." She tsk's, and Lucy skims up to her.

"The sand in the ballast? It might not deter her like true land, but I will only need a little to multiply." Lucy suggested. Maria nodded once. "I'll arrange it." She added lightly, "Get that man to the stores!" She roars, clapping her hands and hissing as her burns sting. A few crewmen must also physically help Charlotte and Peter to their feet.

"Everyone get this shit straightened out!" Nettie snaps, and the crew hurry to obey. She turns on her heel to the doctor and her group. "Guests, if you'll please go back to your rooms …" she adds, watching as obediently, the doctor's husband shuffles Michael past her, Esme leading the way, and Bella lumbering after them. Nettie's feline eyes land on Edward and Alice, and she scowls. "Not you two." She adds darkly. This makes Bella pause before she follows the others.

* * *

The two Forks wait, and the First Mate slinks up to them.

"Why are you here?" She hisses at them.

Alice sticks her chin out. "To see that Isabelle has the baby!" She says.

"Will you eat it?" Nettie asks back, and neither of them answer her. Maria glares at Isabelle.

"You're spawning a changeling?" She asked, her tone high with disgust. "How despicable-"

"No! It's Michael's …." Isabelle's hands cradle her belly, and she looks angry. But Maria only scowls; she was not the Captain of this ship and leader of a witch coven to be lied to now. Bella's face crumples with agony. "I have to tell him it will be stillborn – I have to break his heart-"

"I'm sure no one here cares." Nettie says sharply, cutting her off. There's a beat of silence, but no objections. Isabelle keeps her head down and slinks back to her room.

Nettie pulls out a stick of green chalk and flings it onto the ground. As though it was sentient, the chalk jumps up and draws a circle around the pair before they can dart away. "... You will stay in that circle all night." She tells them, "If, in the morning, you're still there, you will be allowed to stay on this ship." She says.

"What does it do, witch?" Despite their diminished position, Edward still taunts. "Sprout purifying fire?" He asks.

"No, it's just chalk." Nettie snorts. "_But_ if you step over the line, I'll kill you myself, how's that?" She responds, hands spread in a gracious shrug, almost a bow, and the pair in the circle look at her with a growing sense of dread. Out of all the witches who flung spells tonight, Nettie was the only one with completely unmarked hands.

* * *

The siren slips past the porthole in the Platt room. She pauses; not as sharp as the rest of them, hair warmer than lighter, she peers into the window.

Carlisle meets her gaze calmly – the little changeling girl, having grown up sure of her natural grace and beauty, until he had discovered how unnatural it was. His eyes are sad, he says; "Rose-"

"Fair unknown." She responds, her voice not a lyrical tilt but a deep echoing coo. "Tell him I am fair unknown." With no more to say – she turns away, and slithers through the stars.

Carlisle meets his wife's gaze at her departure – morose and guilt war in his eyes.

There is a knock at the door. Cautious, Esme answers.

First Mate Nettie stands tall, a feline grin on her face. "Our trade, doctor's husband." She declares, eyes wide and dilated from their slitted state.

Carlisle chuckles uneasily as he inclines his head. The watch is handed over, and hands shaken. "I am usually known as fisherman's boy." He tells her, and there is a pause as Nettie eagerly examines the watch. "Now yours?" He prompts her, amused.

But Nettie shakes her head absently. "I need not carry one. Here," passed to him with nary a batted eye is a ragged pistol. Carlisle handles it gingerly, and Esme's mouth thins to a line. Heavy, old – iron. Nettie turns away, eyes remaining on her new acquisition. "I'm sure you've seen – I rarely make use of it." She tells them as she stalks away.

Carlisle grips the handle firmly and begins to close the door.

Nettie stops. "Wait – this watch, it will mark days and nights, will it not?" She asks him, a grin slowly spreading across her face. "For the rhyme."

Carlisle's face is impassive. "That, my dear, I would not know." He informs her, and closes the door.

Edward, stood neatly in the circle, would not have heard the exchange – were it not for his sharp and pointed ears. "Liar." He declares quietly with relish.


	4. Whispers and Lies

Jasper and Peter carry Emmett between them as they follow Maria into a tiny matchbox room. Peter still seemed shaky on his feet, but he doesn't speak a word. The three of them make up the only men on the crew.

"We'll need to cover the floor with sand and have him constantly supervised, so he'll need a separate space." Maria explains carefully, and they set him down on a chair, holding him mostly upright.

Peter is ordered to fetch the heather, and they spread it evenly on the mattress, before mentioning for Emmett's body to be carefully laid on the bed. She also lays some rope at the ready next to his prone form. Now he was laid out; something concerned was revealed. Where the siren had kissed him, the left side of his neck, a dark, ugly bruise had formed. Maria hums thoughtfully at it and nods her head.

"Now the sand." Maria mutters.

"I have it!" Lucy almost floats into the room, much happier with wind spells, which were her specialty, though her burns are rubbed raw and leaking clear liquid from the air-blasted sand scouring her palms.

They dump the sand in the middle of the room, and Maria points to Jasper.

"Make sure it's even coverage and leads out the door too. It's your job to ensure the sand isn't swept away by the winds." Maria told him, and he nods once, sullenly as the room is vacated of people.

"This is your fault." Maria tells him, matter-of-factly, and holds up her hand for silence when Jasper raises his hands to disagree with her. "McCarty wouldn't have gotten caught if he were smarter, true, but you can't even fight off a siren, your sister species, what's to become of you?" She asks sharply. But they both knew the answer to that. She turns to take her leave. "Don't even think of helping them. If the sand isn't here and spread evenly, I'll burn those gossamer little wings of yours." She adds over her shoulder and shuts the door behind her.

Jasper slumps down even more and sticks the brush of the broom into the pile, beginning to spread it out.

* * *

It's lonely on the deck for Alice and Edward as everyone knows to ignore them, perhaps not Michael, but he's over-come with sickness after the storm and does not make an appearance that night.

Alice huffs as they stand on the deck, while Edward flicks through his book, some of the pages were damaged, faded and burnt from solar flare, but it was better than nothing.

She sighs wistfully. "I hope the boy's alright …." She murmurs.

Edward groans and rolls his eyes, "Please, the siren will have him drowned by tomorrow." He scoffs. Alice gasps at him, whacking his arm in horror, but he only shrugs in confusion.

"Oh!" Alice laughs, "Not that big oaf! Jasper! He looks such a poor unfortunate … It's so unfair." She sighs again and laughs at her own lie. The fae did not care about fairness.

"Oh, shut up about him!" Edward hisses, his teeth almost melting into something worse. "You've never meddled this much with a human before!"

"He's not!" She snaps back, spinning around and beseeching him with bug-like eyes. "The sirens would have kissed him first!" She argues, "I saw it when I had to duck those horrid little blue arrows. He's one of us."

* * *

The first night passes without incident, and the course is charted to a close planet nearby, barely more than an untethered moon. It's closer to the Quill cluster than not, and would, doubtlessly, have land. It was seven days away, and Maria was furious with the delay.

In the morning, Nettie comes out and nods, satisfied with their obedience. Edward and Alice sit back-to-back, and glower at her.

"Very good, you passed the first test." She tells them.

"The first one!?" Edward squawks indignantly. She nods and rubs out a small portion of the line with the toe of her boot, signalling their freedom from the circle. They both jump out quickly, and the circle fades entirely moments after.

"Now, if you'll excuse us …." Edward mutters darkly, and they both head upstairs.

"Oh, that's fine." Nettie says airily, and follows them up, passing by the small room Emmett was kept in, with no window, as Alice checked, and no one outside to inquire as to the fate of the persons within. To the Fork room, with a new door – or the same one, magically repaired – in place.

Nettie smiles as Edward and Alice shuffle suspiciously inside. But nothing's amiss, and there's no magic they can sense.

Then the door slams shut, and on her side Nettie makes the Horned Hand and presses it against the wood. Edward curses as the doorknob glows green again, signalling they were now trapped in again. But the seal was only a precaution; the doorknob was made of iron.

"Second test; you stay in there all day." Nettie explained, her face looming in the porthole.

"I could kick the door down again." Edward dourly reminds her.

"Then you die. Maria hasn't much more time to waste on gauging how dangerous you are." She adds, her tone almost sad, before she disappears.

"Well neither do we!" Alice snaps belatedly, stamping her foot and scowling.

* * *

Isabelle is in much more cheerful spirits. The Fork siblings were holed up in their room, Captain's orders, she had been told, which meant Edward would not be in danger if he was imprisoned. She felt almost light on her feet, if her heavy stomach wasn't weighing her down. Bella glanced at their darkened door, and thinks she sees his pale, sharp face.

She loathes herself, for a moment, wondering if he was missing her.

Carlisle tries not to worry too obviously about them. "The Captain believes we were deceived also …." He murmurs to his wife.

She seemed as concerned with their fates. "They can handle themselves." She promised him, but her own tone was uncertain.

* * *

In Emmett' room, Jasper trickles water into his slack mouth with a rag as he slowly wakes. Emmett groans and shifts, not raising, but not staying still. Jasper eyes the loose heather on his bed cautiously.

"… Where is she?" Emmett moans, eyes that were almost black look at Jasper, "Where is she? Take me to her … please, friend … please." He whispered. Jasper shook his head, and Emmett began to wail, and, wary, Jasper crawls into the corner.

"Fair Unknown! Fair Unknown!" His wails only grow longer, and mournful. All the while; he shifts, as though trying to gain the energy to move. But his own moaning exhausts him. Not wanting to try and restrain the man if he could stand, Jasper is quick to lash him to the bed.

Everyone was on high alert as they sailed, as though a siren would pop up at any time and attack.

That night, after dinner, Nettie lets the Forks siblings out, the door opening with a click and a crack.

They shuffle outside, sour faced.

"So you passed, congratulations." She says scornfully. "Since all you've been eating has been bread and broth-"

"-been keeping tabs on us-" Edward cuts in poisonously.

"-I'm guessing you don't have to." Nettie finishes. "You will not go into the galley without Captina's permission. That's all." With that, she turns on her heel and leaves.

"… I don't even want to be out here." Edward mutters, and stalks back inside their room – preferable now it is a choice.

Alice though, skips over to where Emmett was held. Jasper sits outside, knees under his chin as he pinches the sand and sprinkles it, testing the gravity field by candlelight.

"Hello, boy." She whispers. It's quiet, and no one else can be seen. He nods but doesn't look at her. "Come here." She adds. There's an inhuman and nearly musical lilt to her voice that seems to be her natural tone.

He stands slowly, and she steps up to him, looking at his face. Without asking, she embraces him lightly. He doesn't react outwardly, as she slips a hand up his shirt, skimming along his back. That touch makes him shudder, but he doesn't move to stop her.

"I can feel there, where your wings were …." She breathes, pressing in between his shoulder blades. Two nubs of bone flex under his skin and scars, something between his ribs and spine, but closer to his shoulder blades. He says nothing, looking out at the sky. Her other hand comes up to touch his neck. "And I feel here, where your voice was …." She adds, before taking his face in her hands. "I'm not disgusted with you, boy, even if you are trapped here. I don't think you're weak." She coos softly and stands on her toes to press a small kiss into the corner of his mouth, before stepping away and darting back inside her room.

He stands there a little longer, before slumping back down on the floor.

* * *

Land still eludes them, adrift beyond any planets, and it will be the third night. Emmett struggles loudly, shouting and cursing them; demanding they release him and let him fling himself into the sky to be with his siren.

"Your rhyme never mentioned that they longed for the fae-filth." Nettie grumbles, and Carlisle only shrugs.

"Perhaps it is easier to hear that way." He sighs. Michael has finally been able to raise, and now seemed very concerned that the Fork siblings do not eat.

"Come now! Will my wife forgive me, letting her friend waste away?" He asks, following doggedly on Edward's heels.

"I assure you I am fine," Edward says levelly, and gives the man one tight, very cold smile, "if you'll excuse me." He mutters and slams the door of his cabin in the other man's face.

Carlisle watches the conversation. "You do not think very highly of the fae, why?" He asks Nettie.

Nettie tosses her hair, her mouth twisting as though the distaste was a physical sensation. "To be born in thin places. Not on any star, planet, moon or ground." She says it like a curse. "To defy gravity and breathe more than air? What is that?"

"Creatures, fae – those whose habitat is the sky, while ours is land." Carlisle answers softly. "They were not born and made any stranger than, surly, they see us." He reasons.

In the face of his tolerance, she only sneers. "Hm, is that all?" She asks lightly, mockingly. "Does not the old maps say, where these things dwell – here be monsters?"

"Dragons, on the contrary." Carlisle says, his calm resolve untouched. "The word was dragons."

"Oh, Carlisle, I don't think so." Nettie purrs, and in the teeth of her smile, something glows behind her teeth. "Dragons, I know." She promises, through wisps of smoke, as though she could breathe enough fire to burn down the wicked winds she rode.

* * *

In their quarters, Esme scribbles into her small pocketbook. "A dragon?" She asks her husband, eyes astonished as he inclines his head. "Well, that certainly changes things. There'll be no admitting those girls were old friends." Esme says decisively.

Carlisle, for his part, looks very mournful. "I do not wish the Denali Three harm." He says softly. The fae do not keep friends, but humans do and so he considered them as such. Esme tuts, looking sympathetic, and reaches out to take his hand.

"Rosalie calls herself Fair Unknown now." Esme says, and there's deep warmth in her voice. But Carlisle only bows his head. "You cannot blame yourself forever. She has left to carve out her own path." Esme reminds him softly.

"If these witches hurt her …." Carlisle whispers, but in his agony he cannot continue. Esme can only draw him close to her and gently caresses his face; to promise soft nothings and sweet fondness.

Maria watched Alice, sitting like a bird on the railing of the deck, looking out the swirl of purple. "What do you know of your sisters?" Maria asks her. Continuing as Alice responds in no way. "What will happen? Will the fair Unknown try and take him on nights three, five and ten?" Maria mused aloud.

"_No_," Alice snorts, with all the grace of a girl, "what kind of story would that make?" She mocks; eyes slitted unkindly, she slinks off the railing.

"Then tell me; how am I wrong?" Maria asked; her tone cajoling. But the little sylph is not one to be easily wheedled.

"I would not know." She answers, but by her smirk it is clearly a lie, and leaves before Nettie can trap her in chalk again.

* * *

That night, Maria calls for no less than two people at all times to guard Emmett's room, alongside Jasper, and had them stuff their ears with beeswax.

Alice hasn't retreated indoors all day, humming and peering over the sides of the ship, watching the winds and remaining tight lipped as to what she searched for and what she saw.

Maria had no time for guessing though, and she doubted the creature was so stupid as to relay information to those sirens that were no doubt lurking just out of view. She would be sorely mistaken to anger a shipful of witches.

It grew darker and darker, and the atmosphere became heavier as the static around them crackled. To calm herself, Lucy took to sharpening her blades, and the long raw scrape of stone on metal finally forced Alice back inside her quarters.

Then the singing started. The crew jumped to their feet. Maria growled, but remained at the wheel, her grip tight.

One white figure jumps on board. It wasn't Emmett's siren, and it slinks low to the deck. Maria didn't want to scare it off too soon lest she comes back with reinforcements in the worst way, and they needed to see if the sand would work.

She moves slowly, languidly, along the railings, using it as a crutch to push her forward as she slithered. Her dinner-plate eyes were on the door.

The biggest lie was that all sirens were beautiful; most were terrifying beings, as though they were drudged from the deepest parts of the Earth's sea. Few seemed ill-made; moulded into a basic human shape by something that did not know what a human was, they possessed no details or humaneness.

This siren, more eel than woman, slinks to where Jasper watches her cautiously, standing guard outside the closed door. They stare at each other for a very long time, before she begins to … dance. Turning and swaying in the air, her hands spread, and swing in arcs. She sways lightly, in time with a beat no one else could hear.

Except, it seemed, Jasper himself. He bobs his head at the same time, and they begin to dance. Jasper takes more of a stomp and clap, jumping nimbly from one foot to another; never with both. Mimicking her as he stays rooted to the ground. The siren is graceful and slinks around him, spinning and undulating. They go in a rugged tight circle, and each time the siren carefully avoids the line of sand.

Finally, Jasper stops outside the door again, this time smirking, and the siren slips back over the rails and into the winds. Jasper seems, triumphant, almost, as he stands there, and glanced at Maria.

She meets his eye but doesn't acknowledge him, simply nodding to Nettie, who makes a tally in her notebook. Just seven days to go, marked by the cyborg's watch.

* * *

On the fifth day the ship is enveloped in a triboelectric fog, the static dancing over the crew's skin and causing any and all hair to stand on end. Edward is furious at this dire predicament, a dire insult to his vanity and Alice's tongue flicks out; watching the tiny sparks fly over her mouth like kisses.

Maria is on her guard instantly, and barks orders to secure the ship and crew. Jasper seems extremely uneasy and stands outside of Emmett's prison with a blade that seemed to be made a purple glass. Lucy, Nettie and Maria stay on deck, in a loose circle, waiting.

The singing. Alice and Edward are outdoors when it starts as well, and they hum along merrily, while leaning over the railing. Maria snaps at them to shut up, but they do not comply, and she cannot have the circle broken or waste time forcing them to.

"You two better not be encouraging them … mark me – I will not consider it a waste of my final moments if I carve the baby out of that woman's belly. It would be merciful to see the infant dead than in the hands of the fae." Nettie says lowly. The Forks stop humming but seem just as pleased by the crew's peril while silent.

The sirens creep over the edge of the boat slowly, and quietly. They slink across the deck but make no move to Emmett's room.

"It seems they'll be no dancing tonight," Alice spoke up, and looks disappointed. "Though you were very good!" She calls out, looking at Jasper affectionately, and though he looks to her, he does nothing else.

Four of them, just like the first night, with the smallest in front, and the eel-like woman among the last three. The one who had kissed Emmett comes forward, darting to the edge of the circle but not foolish enough to break into it. "_He belongs to me … I am all he can see … this will kill him entirely …." _She says, her every word a perfect, breathy whisper, as though it were the breeze that sounded a windchime. Her face twists, as though trying to convey an expression; but it's nothing recognisable.

Nettie snarls. "We'll take our chances. We'll reach land soon enough, and you won't get him, creature."

The siren only rolls her head on her neck weakly, and stumbles, totters about, as though the buffeting of the ship was too rough for her. "_I must have what I have won … it will harm him to be in the sun …."_

"You want him? Come and claim him, if you dare." Lucy hisses. But her challenge it not taken up, after a few beats of silence, they slip back into the ether, into the murky dark of the Etherium. Edward and Alice begin to hum again as the witches disperse, all the warier for the lack of confrontation.

* * *

Emmett was awake and aware after the fifth night, mostly. Aware of nothing but the sirens.

His howls almost caused the walls to shake. Jasper used a cloth to mop his foaming lips. "I need her!" Emmett rages. "Please, oh Captain please relieve me of my duties, I need to be with her!" He struggles against Jasper's grip, and more than a few of the heather fall to the floor.

Maria just sneers. This is not the first broken man she's seen, and it won't be the last. "Strap him down!" She snaps, and Charlotte is there, using a frayed rope to tie down his neck, chest, waist and legs. When he was secured, Maria leans over his red face. "Emmett, listen to yourself, you fool! You're under their spell," he shakes his head adamantly and begins to thrash in earnest, "but we are trying to save you – hold him down I said!" Maria scowls as Charlotte and Jasper physically restrain him, using more rope to better imprison him.

"No!" Emmett shouts desperately, "No, this will surely kill me! Every breath I take without her is death!" He was only swinging his head limply and wiggling his fingers after Charlotte had so firmly tied him but contorts and struggles as much as he is able.

"… I can see there is no reasoning with you." Maria says dismissively, nodding for Charlotte to leave the room, which she does. "After the tenth day, you'll see." She says gravely.

"After the tenth day, I'll _die!_" It almost seemed possible, too. Emmett, once cherry-cheeked, large and brawny, open and cheerful, looked a gruesome shamble of his former self. His skin was flaking and cracked, leaking clear slimy pus, his eyes sunken, his breath shallow, quick and inexplicably wet.

Most importantly; the bruise has worsened over time. Becoming darker and darker; it was now the dreaded Black Spot. A curse on any who fly the skies.

Maria hums in thought, and slams the door after her, leaving a howling Emmett and a worried-looking Jasper.

Carlisle, the midwife's husband, stands at the door as Maria leaves, looking concerned. "You don't think he's telling the truth?" He asks her.

"Of course not, it's the black spot where she kissed, I'm sure it would prompt him to do whatever it takes to be drowned by her." Maria says, and leaves him there to attend to her actual duties. She had no time or patience to spend on a doomed man.

Carlisle looks at where Jasper slowly leaves the room, his posture slumped, closing the door on the man's pleading. "It hurts you, seeing your friend like this." Carlisle says gently, and Jasper blinks at him. "Do you know if he's serious?" He asks gently.

Sadly, Jasper nods his head, mouth thin and twisted. Carlisle looks pityingly at the creature, chained to this ship, unable to even speak.

* * *

It was time again for the yellow liquid. Esme comes in to administer it, Bella takes her arm.

"You know her." The pale young woman said, the intensity in her gaze giving her highly flushed cheeks a feverish expression. "The one that kissed that man, on the heather. You know her." Her tone was soft, beseeching.

Esme shook her head, for a moment, her pupils seemed to take up her entire eyes; only sclerae and black. "It doesn't matter." Esme says, her eyelids relaxing, taking on her normal, matronly kindness. "Not to you." She continues, pressing a palm to the younger woman's sweaty forehead. But, Esme casts a suspicious, furtive gaze to the door. "The Captain …."

Bella gasps. "I wouldn't betray you!" She argues immediately, and Esme gives her a smile. Rare, now, since they've been in the sky. "I really … thank you for coming this far with me." Bella mutters, ducking her head.

It pained Bella to dwell on it; the distance between them now. She had gone to Esme when she felt the quickening; told her the whole of it. Edward would have more leverage in the fae court to marry a human after the birth, Bella was sure of it. She was sure, with a babe she may even be able to petition to become one too.

She remembers, reading the fairy tales to Edward, how he would wink or chuckle, the closest he could come to deny or confirm any of the stories.

Esme takes her hand and pets it. "We have a journey ahead of us, dear." She says softly, and stands, excusing herself before she says anything more.

Carlisle sat with Michael, as the poor man upends his stomach into a bucket. His eyes were glassy from the constant strain, and meekly sipped water as it was fed to him. Carlisle sighs, knowing his audience was beyond hearing him. "I had thought to help her … I had thought that taking a little changeling child to the skies was the right thing to do." He says sadly, shaking his head – what a fool!

"Her parents thought her human, but she was simply too beautiful …." He tuts, pressing the cup to Michael's lips again and shushing the tired groan. "She blames me – she cannot return home, and she is not comfortable as she is. I should have realised, having been swapped as a babe she would know nothing of the sky, or her own people." Carlisle continues, pursing his lips.

"Now she has renounced her own name, and names are so very important to them all … if she knows that. Why do you think I'd taken my wife's surname?" He asks the dazed Michael, who barely notes him. "Fair Unknown … for she is fair, and barely knows herself." Carlisle will never be able to ease the worry in his gut. She would never accept his help again, would not heed him, or any warnings about the crew of the Greyhound.


	5. A Thousand-Year-Long Nights

It was when Emmett was safely completely immobilised, the sirens call constantly after him. Heard but not seen, as though their voices served only to keep them remembered. But their call isn't appealing or hypnotic as it once was, it was baleful and sad. The crew were moved to tears, several begged Maria to release the poor man. When Charlotte got on her knees to beg, Maria slapped her across the face, twice.

Her eyes were fierce, "So this is how they'll wear us down." She snarls, throwing her gaze out into the winds as though she would like nothing more than for the sirens would slink their way on deck already. "Everyone but Jasper and the Forks will stuff their ears with beeswax, and I will not hear one word in argument." She commanded. The crew does as she tells them, mostly run by Nettie, who had yet to bow to the siren's awful mourning. Lucy was the last that was unaffected but slung herself limply over the bird's nest and offered no help.

Edward watches the crew's effort with open contempt. "All this for one man. You would think they'd have dumped him overboard, rather than bring such curses onto their ships. Do not humans hate curses?" He asks with a sneer.

Alice seems unconcerned and rather bored. Jasper had been holed up with Emmett and she did loathe the way the man screamed so pathetically. "Hm. Humans hate most things; side effect of how much care they feel." She replied listlessly. "This is so _dull_." She whined.

Esme kept Isabelle carefully hidden away these days, lest the sirens sniff out her pregnant belly. Bella seems mostly encumbered by being so close to her still-suffering husband. Carlisle stays on deck more than often, except at night, and offers what help he can in Emmett' absence. He knew ropes and knots and not much else, but it was some ease to the strain of a crewman down.

One more night passes in such a way, and on the seventh night, Jasper commits treason.

He waits until Maria leaves the helm, and until Peter is put on the wheel. Peter never looked at Jasper twice, concerned with keeping look-out for sirens.

He waits until even the tenacious Captina would be in bed, and crept from his post at the entrance, into Emmett' room.

Inside, the dark does not bother him. What bothers him is Emmett' shallow breathing, his fluttering eyes and constant mumbling. He pulls a sharp blade from his boot, the colour of a green glass bottle, and starts to saw..

Emmett doesn't wake until Jasper grasps his shoulders and heaves him up, shoving his filthy shirt in his mouth to silence his screams. He drags Emmett from his bed and out of the room.

From the bird's nest, Lucy, long blonde hair spilling from the perch, stirs as she hears a door slam open, and peeks a sleepy eye downwards ….

Frantic, Jasper drags the larger man to the railing, and, as Emmett slumps, in coherent and gaping, Jasper tries to use gravity to throw him overboard.

"Maria! That fae is _a traitor!_" Lucy screams. Several things happen at once.

A bolt of blue lightening streaks from the bird's nest to strike Jasper where he stands. Emmett attempts to crawl over the railing but can only sag harder against it while he moaned, his huge frame spent of all energy.

The captain's quarters burst open, and Maria, in a flash, is pinning Jasper down with chains that shine unnaturally bright.

Nettie slinks to the helm and slaps Peter across the face, snarling over his incompetence.

Alice peeks her head out of her cabin, spots the blasted iron chains pinning down Jasper, shrieks with fear and slams the door shut again.

The iron biting into his skin, Jasper isn't even able to scream in pain. Maria's face is ugly with fury, and she wraps the metal around his neck, dragging him to the main sail and chaining him up. She doesn't even bother with a lock and key; knowing the smoking iron was working its way into his flesh, knowing he would never be able to free himself. He sits slumped against the deck, smoke wafting from the iron chains and the open wounds they dig into his skin. Maria uses this time to kiss his silently screaming face as Alice watches furiously from the tiny porthole in her door.

* * *

The next morning, Jasper's mouth was closed, his chin flush against his chest, barely breathing. The chains had stopped smoking; his severely burnt skin trying to close around the iron. Carlisle looks stricken to see him in this state.

"You'll kill him!" The doctor's husband gasps, kneeling at the fae's side and reaching out to him.

"Not quite." Maria said dispassionately, and Jasper's head snapped forward, his teeth sharp as he bit at Carlisle's hand, though the man manages to shrink back in time. "He's spent a week in those before I managed to carve the wings off his back." She told him as Jasper flopped back down.

Carlisle's eyes look terribly sad in his terribly handsome face. "… Please, aren't you ever to release him?" He asks. Maria isn't sure if he speaks of the ship as a whole or just the chains, but as her answer would be negative to both, she elects to ignore him entirely.

They reach the small, crumbling planet, slipping through the weak and gaseous atmosphere, coating the solar sails with yellow powder that must be worked off in rotation of crew, all gas masks and gloves.

"It's … empty." Nettie says, suspicion in her voice. This planet was dying, the red sun it orbited a slow and dreadful supernova, dooming it to a long decay. Lucy hummed.

"Such vegetation!" Lucy trilled, looking pleased. Nettie cast a harsh eye over her but kept her tongue; Lucy's flighty ways are what predicted Jasper's movement and led to their later capture of him, after all.. The trees melted and warped in the UV radiation; there was nothing growing in any feasible shape. Only clinging to the vestiges of what was left of life. The ship would not be able to fully dock; not much water in this planet, and what it had was mostly sulphur, as the magma below the crust leaked its poison. A planet gradually bleeding out.

The air they breach was rancid; Maria calls for all masks to be worn. Purplish and thick like smoke; the Forks siblings sniff it with malcontent but no danger. The fae had no need to fear such things as air. They anchor at the first sight of land; not daring to make contact through more than the anchor. A small selection; Peter, Charlotte, Maria. With Lucy – set off in a small tender; she hops off swiftly and disappears into the small twisted forest.

Maria clicks her tongue at the woman's actions, and calls Peter and Charlotte to hunt her down. They scour every inch of the tiny place and find not a trace of her; unable to venture too far from the Greyhound in such foggy atmosphere. Charlotte tries to track her with a string mounted in a feather, blowing her magic through it to flutter straight to Lucy, but it only droops to the ground.

Maria dislikes the dying planet intensely and calls to camp on the ship on the eighth night. Jasper is chained, Carlisle frets, Alice watches, nothing happens. Even the sirens are silent.

* * *

When the cyborg's watch declares it the next day, Emmett is transferred to the land. They set up a small tent to lay him under, sprinkle the heather, and even Isabelle and Michael leave the ship to get the feel of being back on land.

Isabelle takes a stroll with her husband, the first colour on his cheeks since they started the voyage, and smiles at him kindly, though the expression may well be lost in her gas mask.

"You look better." She tells him, and he rightfully agrees. "We're near my friend yet, one of the crewmen had taken ill so we're to stay here for a time." She explains to him.

"I'm sure that'll suit me well; I've had the most incorrigible haze over my memories on that ship, I barely remember the second day out of port!" He replies, laughing at himself.

Isabelle casts a dark, resentful glare at the Fork siblings, who watch the tent preparation, faces clear of any barrier and assured him tightly that nothing of note had escaped his notice.

Lucy comes periodically that day to bring supplies and tell them nothing. Maria corners her on her second appearance and demands to know of her meandering. Lucy only says they are hearty and well, and leaves again, like a stream of water carved over time into limestone.

The ninth night passes, and Carlisle attends to Jasper's wounds, dabbing his chest with a warm cloth, and speaking soothingly to him with no reply. Peter seems terrified, as though he believed in the possibility of Jasper breaking through the chains and tearing the man's head clean off his shoulders. Peter's right cheek baring three long welts of Nettie's hand. Using a pen and paper, Peter asks desperately after the man's wife, who had been noticeably absent on deck.

"She can't stand seeing the boy like this," Carlisle explains, though he huffs at his own use of the word 'boy', "or to look at the chains that bind him …." He murmured.

Peter sighed sadly, and Carlisle glanced at him a little closer.

"… Are you the same?" Carlisle asks.

Peter twists his neck in a strange way, and steps carefully closer to the iron chains. He reaches out, near Jasper, and rests his hand on the main mast. The wood glows under his touch, green and welcoming. His fingers glow with it, sinking, as though melting into the wood.

Carlisle watches, his eyes widening. "… It's beautiful. A wood sprite?" He asks quietly.

Peter inclines his head grimly. "He is the trunk that makes the mast." It is Esme, looking forlorn as she walks to the railing, looking down at Emmett's still-struggling body. She then looks to the foremast, where Charlotte lingers. "And that is hers. If this ship goes down, so will they." She explains.

The Fork siblings prowl the deck as the siren's call starts up again. Fainter this time, but the dying planet's atmosphere is weak as it crumbles. It would take time, but the sirens could swim ever closer. It puts the witches on edge, every call like a taunt.

* * *

Maria uses the tenth day to prepare for the tenth night. She had any mutated vegetation tied in bunches to the railings and heaped on top of Emmett' barely-moving chest on the land. Purple curling leaves, drooping violent orange berries. Maria was furious; she wasn't sure if it was her beloved ship that would be trespassed, or they would brave the ground. She knew they could have seen him, though their eyes were weak outside of the black of space.

On the tenth night, Maria splits the group uncertainly. Peter, Charlotte and Nettie stay on board, and Lucy and Maria guard Emmett. Michael and Bella keep Carlisle company in their room, as Esme stays alone. The sun pulses its slow death, no longer intact enough to spin the planet from rise or set and they wait.

Sulphurous and toxic though the water was, it suited the sirens more than land. Maria watches, as they wiggle and glide to the yellow murk, and disappears within it. Her hands clench into fists – they were dedicated.

The sirens wash themselves up onto the shore, one wave at a time, so limp they look like the white cream ringing a custard tart until they stand. Maria demands violence immediately, and three sirens are bombarded by the blue lightening, but manage to get quite far onto the beach before Nettie and Charlotte swing down to assist. But one isn't. The Fair Unknown has only one goal in mind.

Jasper doesn't look up as he hears the uncertain, shaky steps of a creature not meant for solid ground. The Fair Unknown is different from the other three; with their golden eyes, long white hair and rail thin, elongated bodies, gills on their ribs. This one is plumper, within her face was a quality that seemed much more human, and her eyes are gleaning purple. Peter stands near his mast, hissing timidly. But the siren does not heed him, and he watches with wide eyes, concerned only with the fate of his trunk.

"_He is to come with I … say your good-bye_ …." She murmurs faintly, as her webbed hands claw at the iron rope. Jasper struggles and open his mouth uselessly as her relentless tugging only aggravates the iron burns.

"Not like that," Esme says sternly, a shimmering, fur coat gleaming on her shoulders. She looks fiercer and less herself, her round face glowing. The cloak moves like liquid as she strides past the siren, kneeling in front of Jasper.

The siren makes way for the selkie, and Jasper looked blearily into her soft face, eyes dulled with pain. "I think you've suffered enough. Though I'm sure I don't know how we'll see Bella's wish granted now." She says quietly, leaning her head down and grasping the iron with her teeth. With a grunt and a savage jerk of her head, the iron snaps and Jasper pants with relief.

"Come, we have a boy to save." Esme says, standing, and helping Jasper do the same. "Though he will not be a boy much longer." She muses.

Maria howls when Jasper jumps from the ship with two figures and watches as they run to Emmett's tent. She can't make it there and kill him, while keeping the siren closest to her from ripping out her throat. Nettie has one, and Lucy was using the strongest gust of winds she could conjure to shoot the other one straight out of the atmosphere. But this planet was slowly becoming the space dust it was once more, and in this liminal space, the creatures revelled.

The Fair Unknown reaches Emmett's tent as Jasper fends off the blue lightening; as he had had the most practise. Emmett doesn't stir as Esme quickly sweeps a path through the vegetation, the siren leaps in her wake, dancing to any unmarked ground. The Fair Unknown leans over his deathly still form and sighs tenderly.

At her exhale, Emmett' eyes open, and he manages a faint, blissful smile.

"It's time to release you, boy." Esme informs him, stepping on the leaves with ease, and brushing it thoroughly off his chest. The Fair Unknown leans down and closes the gap between them.

The touch of their lips brings more rigor and colour to Emmett' body than ever, and he all but springs from his bed. He clutches her in his arms like a lover, kisses her again. His skin begins cracking, withering off in huge, wrinkled flakes, replaced by something oily and inhuman, as though lightly scaled.

The Fair Unknown lets out a blissful, high trill, as Emmett comes to her so sweetly, pulling out the strands of his own brittle hair as it was replaced with shining copper curls, breaking their kiss to spit square white teeth from his mouth as he smiles a row of pointed fangs.

Maria's howls turn even more ungodly as she watches Emmett run so willingly to the sky with that fat siren, taking the second figure with them. The other sirens happily disperse, and the blue lightening crackles down. They soar, shimmy and swim, back to the skies, shrieking their pleasure the entire way. But not three – or four – but five. Emmett legs are no longer, his tail is as bright deep orange as a comet, and the Etherium welcomes him.

Incensed at the wasted time and effort, Maria screams into the heavens.

"Hold him down!" Maria roars, as she charges straight across the beach, to where Jasper stands. The other witches fly at him like Candarian zap-wings, hands grasping his limbs and he hits the ground in a spray of sand.

Peter is too lost in the relief that no more iron girds his trunk anymore that he misses Esme climbing over the railing and heading back to her cabin. Micheal sees her, who can only think vaguely that he's never seen such a finely made cloak before. And something of a strange plague doctor's mask, a mottle brown beak over her face. As though she had whiskers ….

Pinned to the sand, Jasper doesn't struggle. His heart is lighter, his friend is free.

Maria stares hatefully down at him and reaches with her fingers to his face clutching the sides of his head. For a moment, it seems she would rip his entire head off, but she only digs her thumbs and forefingers deeply into his sockets and rips out his eyeballs.

Jasper was put to his normal duties, and it seemed his vision was not needed for his chores.

Alice watches him, resentfully.

"I wish he had his eyes again," She sighs, Edward next to her. "Even more than I wish to eat them." She added earnestly. Edward rolls his eyes.

"I wish we reached the blasted planet _now_. I wish for what is _mine_." He snarls, his eyes fixed intently on Isabelle and her swollen belly. Alice looks to her brother, and her expression is almost affectionate.

"I will help!" Alice chirps up, grinning with several extra teeth than humans have. "Get the boy's eyes and I will help!" She says decisively.

Edward seemed almost offended, very much displeased with having to help some enslaved cretin. But he eventually nods, and their deal is struck.

* * *

Edward creeps into the First Mate's cabin. Nettie was not there, of course, he would not risk it, even shrunk down into a silver bug as he were. The cabin is not spacious; enough for her bunk and her desk and so many scrolls of paper stuck into the netting fixed flat against the far wall. He wants to take some of the papers, keep them as his own, but he can smell the wet, gooey eyes in her desk's drawer. He stares at the iron handle on the drawer, and he scowls. As quickly as he came, he leaves, taking only two pieces of paper, neither of them interesting to him.

Michael loved his wife from the first moment he met her, as children in their small town. He loved Bella even though she never paid him a whit of attention until last Spring. She took him down to the cellar of the neighbour's tavern after the equinox festival and they made love until morning. When Bella felt the quickening, she came to him, almost embarrassed. But Michael was elated, feeling blessed and more happiness than he knew what to do with. His parents were amused; it was not so uncommon, after all, and arranged the wedding with half the town in attendance. The nuptial party was celebrated on his mother's birthday, and they had a large joint party in their yard.

Isabelle was a quiet, solemn girl; extremely clumsy and extremely practical. She helped balance the household finances; calculating just how much it would take for her to stay with his own parent's. A little too much; and they moved in with her kind, vivacious mother. Michael became used to the constant whims of his mother-in-law, lovingly way-laid by her steady daughter. A constant ebb and flow between the two women that made as much room for him as they could. They were doing well; saving excellently for a new baby on the way. But five months in, her belly starting to swell; she made a large request of him. To travel to a distant planet, with such people that had once been allies of Isabelle's dead father.

It was a larger trip than Michael had ever taken; longer than the one-sol travel to the Planet Montresor for his father's trade.

But she begged and pleaded, and even the kindly new midwife in town and her husband agreed to accompany them, being much worldlier than he, and Michael nervously agreed. He'd never been in such a big ship as the Greyhound, but for his wife, whom he finally had after a childhood and adolescence of pining, he would brave any new experiences.

But this ship gave him terrible pains. He felt feverish and weak the entire journey. He barely remembered what events took place, he couldn't keep track of their progress. The midwife's husband was a wonderful help; speaking to him and keeping him company. But it was none the less a truly awful trip.

Michael had been plagued by the worst nightmares; he saw Isabelle sob at their cabin window – repeating over and over that she would give everything for one more blissful night under the stars. He had no clue what it had meant and woke up confused and with a terrible headache.

One night he dreamt that their lovely midwife, Esme, had the face of a seal. It frightened him at first, but when he woke, he realised it was so funny that he chortled until he felt his motion-sickness bubble up again.

One night he dreamt that Alice Fork stood over him, the strange sibling pair they'd met in the city, that offered to go and share the costs of the travel with them, having the same destination in mind. She smiled horribly down at him, and he couldn't move at all; only watch as she raked her too-long nails down and down his wife's belly, over and over. He woke up and couldn't bear to wear his own shirt, the material too rough on his unblemished, smooth torso.

This night, he woke to Edward Fork, his face looking strangely waxen and stretched. The man's angular features were comely, usually, but tonight they looked foreign and wrong. It struck Michael as odd – he looked more insect than man.

Michael felt himself climb out of bed, distantly, as though he were moving underwater, and walk up to the other man. Edward stood in the doorway and beckoned him to follow.

Ambling, clumsy as his dear wife, Michael was led down the stairs, across the deck, and to a door he didn't recall.

"Why?" A voice asks from far away. The voice surprised Michael – it sounded exactly like this own.

"Because I cannot do it. It's not so hard. Using their lightening has exhausted them. They take their coven séance to recover." Edward voice sounded like a whisper in his head.

Edward opened the door, stood aside and pushed him in. The action should alarm him, surely, but Michael found himself so unbothered by it, he almost smiled at his own foolishness.

"To the desk, the second drawer." Edward said, and, obligingly, Michael walked over, to the desk and pulled it open. "Take the jar." Edward said, and, certainly easily done, Michael took a jar with two wet, white and pink lumps inside.

Mike turns back, ambles over, and places the jar in Edward's outstretched claws. Then he wakes up, in bed, his bedclothes sweated through entirely. Isabelle was still in bed, reading next to him.

She looks at him and smiles. She had trouble with her weight during the pregnancy, Esme was having her diet monitored, but she had lost any plumpness in her face, and her bones were more obvious under her skin. But regardless, seeing her calms his confusion, and Michael smiles and wishes her a good morning.

"Are you well, today?" She asks him. He nods, but almost immediately after, feels his stomach roil.

Shaking his head, he stumbles out of bed and dives head-long for the bucket kept for him. He gags and heaves, and his wife tuts with concern.

"I'll get Carlisle," she offers, "I can't crouch." She adds, apologetic. He is only able to nod as his entire body is covered in shivers.

* * *

Nettie was furious. Someone had taken that awful creature's eyes from her private rooms! She had raged to Maria, but the woman did not listen to her plans for immediate revenge.

"We must bide our time," the Captain says sternly, and Nettie is livid, knowing justice would not be served. But Maria silences her, her gaze on the wretched creature, seeing and blinking again. "I've come to a realisation that could benefit us immensely." She says softly, and her gaze shifts, to where an extremely pregnant Isabelle waddles to the next room over, knocking and calling for the midwife or husband inside. Nettie follows her gaze and scowls.

"Maria, if you believe something about this entire troublesome situation is worth it; then I will stand down," Nettie concedes icily. "But if it isn't-"

Maria turns and begins to walk away. "It is, stand down." She says over her shoulder, leaving her first mate glaring resentfully at her back.


	6. The Rising of the Full Moon

Maria watched the approaching planet with a detached sense of relief. After all, this was only a passenger's departure, she had no trades set up, or local witch covens to meet with. But it was the end of this journey at least, and she was not sad to see the finish. If her hunch was right, her coven could very well get their hands on a material worth its weight in blood. She hears the creak and scrabbling of clumsy nearly-human hands scurrying across the fore boom.

Jasper was sitting on the railing, watching the planet with some interest. "No doubt you will weep at the loss of that little bug-eyed creature." The Captain tells her captured fae.

Alice Fork had trotted after him like a besotted dove since they boarded, and the Captina had noticed. She certainly knew that Alice may have even thought of Jasper's freedom, she certainly seemed to be the cause for the boy's returned eyes. Though Maria had some faith in a fae's selfish nature to keep Alice from risking herself.

Jasper looks at her with his pretty blue eyes and says nothing, hanging upside down by his knees, his shirt slipping down, revealing the runes Maria had carved herself, taking everything that he needed.

Maria knew that, in a way, he certainly had her respect, as she had earned his. She heard a soft panting and the creaking of stairs, and dismisses Jasper with an impatient wave, and he walks off, striding over the boom and leaping off, hinting at his once-liquid reflexes.

Maria turned and faced Isabelle Newton, lumbering up to her with her pregnant waddle. She eyed the heavy belly warily, worried any type of strain may cause a baby soon enough.

"Are you quite sure you're not to be in bed?" Maria asked carefully.

Babies born in the cosmic skies were susceptible to being taken by the sirens, though depending on certain variables; the time, the place, the nature of the mother. Having known Isabelle only a short few weeks, the Captina was very confident that any baby born of her could be snatched by creatures straight out of her viscera. In fact, with the Fork siblings circling her, Maria was sure that was exactly what would happen.

As it were, the woman looked exhausted, a light sheen of sweat on her face. Maria considered her closely as she stopped in front of her. She seemed _hollow_, her eyes dark and sunken, her cheeks gaunt and the most colour was in her neck, her sinew bulging out, corded and tense. It disturbed and disgusted Maria, and she took a careful step back.

"We _must_ get to my friend …" Isabelle gasped, and grasped the front of Maria's coat. The Captina froze in response, knowing she couldn't very well fling such a heavily pregnant woman from her, even obviously disturbed as she was.

"My friend is waiting …" her mouth opened but she only managed a pained grimace, "I must reach him!" Isabelle finally said, desperation written clearly across her face. Then, she snatched her hands away from Maria's person to clutch her stomach, her profile doubling down, over her belly as she … _heaved._

Maria felt a flash of panic, "Are you going into _labour_!?" Maria shrieked in a deeply offended tone. She slammed her hands against the railings to lean down, towards the cabins. "_Nettie!_" She ordered, and, more liquid than Jasper could be, the First Mate was bursting from the doors and slinking over to her Captain. "Get that midwife!" She ordered, and watched cautiously as Isabelle righted herself with great effort.

"_No!_ It's not yet time! I can make to the woods! I _will_ make it to my friend!" Isabelle screamed back, but her flush still throbbed in her neck, leaving her face a complete ashen pale. Maria wants to throw her off this ship and be done with these awful problematic people, but Esme is here, pulling Isabelle into her arms.

"You'll come back inside with me, _now_." Esme tells her, and Isabelle wordlessly breaks into long sobs.

"She will have the baby, _now_." A voice counters. It's Edward, eyes only bright green slits, and his skin seemed like marble in the night. He was not human, and, more importantly, he was not happy. "I've waited long enough – I will be given my due." He says.

Maria, wary that this was not her bargain, steps out of the way but does not leave. Whatever happens on this ship is her business, after all.

Esme looks outraged. "All debts will be paid!" She snapped at him, "You'll hold up your end of the bargain, I'll see to that!" She swears closely, before drawing Isabelle away.

All together unconcerned from just a moment ago, Edward dawdles slowly back to his cabin. Maria notes that for a fae, he defers to her, and for a woman of logic and reason, it seemed Esme Platt was surprisingly capable.

More clambering, and Jasper was back. "If you think that talks of bargains could forge one of our own, you were wrong." Maria tells him, and doesn't look at him. "Don't you even think of enlisting those Forks things; I would happily burn your wings, crush your voice and swallow every last drop of your blood. I won, I cheated even better than you did." Maria says, her voice sure and smug.

Jasper says nothing, and doesn't move from his crouch on the railing as she leaves.

"You should rely on no bargain." It was Alice, stepping up to him and looking him straight in the eye. Her expression is dark and terrible. "It would give me the most pleasure to take all of you from her, through a game or a trick, I don't much care." She promises, one hand gentling down his face, her expression longing and sweet. "I would love to have all of those wonderful things to myself." She adds.

* * *

Isabelle howls as she's pushed onto the bed by Carlisle's steady hands. Michael looks up blearily, mid-way through another bout of seasickness.

"Don't worry my love, it's shore soon …." He muttered thickly, before heaving into the bucket with force. Everyone ignores him, and Esme was in the middle of grabbing her midwifery tools when Isabelle clutches her arm.

"Esme, please! I need the stopping stuff! I can't have this baby until we reach my friend!" She screams.

Esme's face twists. "Any more of that stuff for you and that baby may well come out dead. There's no time left." The doctor seems sorrowful, for a moment, as Isabelle begins to scream. "I know, dear, but the deal you made must be carried out, you knew this." She whispers, her words as harsh as her tone. But she is not so callous; prone on the bed was a girl, like any other. One who went to a fairy's bargain and came out all the poorer for it.

"He'll love me, he'll make me his queen …." Isabelle continues to sob, and for all to see, this was the little starry-eyed girl who went so happily into the clutches of a fairy. The door opens again. Esme almost curses.

It was Alice, her black eyes bored and bright. Her gaze falls to Michael, hunched in a corner. She presses her sharp fingers into his blonde wavy hair.

"Be sicker." She says gleefully, and Michael obligingly sick's up so hard and with such force he misses the bucket and has it splatter into his own lap. She giggles in response, and Carlisle clicks his tongue at the awful smell.

"I'm helping! I promised Edward I would help." Alice explains graciously.

"C'mon, boy, you need a quick scrub," The star-sailor's son says kindly, and heaved him up by his arms. He turns a sharp look to Alice. "Those who misbehave do not get told stories." He tells her sternly. Alice reacts instantly, gasping, and flees from the room under such a threat. Carlisle follows her, but turns in the opposite direction with a groaning Mike. The door closes on Isabelle's mindless pleading and Esme's strong grip.

* * *

Isabelle moans weakly from the bed. She refuses to allow herself to push, and the islands come ever closer. Esme sits at her side, sad and angry.

"Why won't he come to me?" Isabelle whimpers with the voice of a smaller girl. Esme frowns; this is the voice of a human who was seduced into a fairy ring. Reedy and pitiful. "He's going to take me away … I'll be with him and our child, in the fairy lands …." She muttered.

Esme shook her head. "Your deal's been made, Bella. It will be carried out." She says, because the fae keep their awful, dreadful word.

* * *

A man waits for them on the pier. He is tall and strong, and watches without moving.

Alice stares at him, and hisses like the salt of the winds. "_Aie! _Fire-keeper!" She yowls, "silver runs liquid through his veins!" She laments, her face crumpling with agony.

Edward leaps from the ship before they fully land. He dives through the air, twisting and clawing the exact same way as the sirens, his eyes bright green. Alice clings to the railing and refuses to budge, fear in her eyes as she cries.

Maria watches coldly as they moor. Isabelle, heaving and grunting as she was half-carried by Esme and Carlisle together, with Mike's arm slung loosely over his shoulder.

Edward reaches the shore as the ship does, and crawls on all-fours like an animal – or a spider, towards the man. He leaps and tackles him to the ground.

"No! Jacob!" Isabelle yells as the two men struggle in the sand. "Please, Edward! Please, leave him be!" She shouts to no avail. Esme struggles to calm her, but she doubles over with a sharp gasp as another contraction causes her to convulse.

Lucy's eyes are sharp as they watch the fight unfold. "Should we assist?" She asks, turning to the Captain.

Maria watches Jacob punch Edward square in the face. "No," she decides, a chill up her spine. "This is not our business. Get these people off my ship." She tells her, with a nod, Nettie stalks off.

"All docking procedures as normal!" Nettie announces viciously. "All passengers and their cargo are to be off this ship within the hour!"

Isabelle is still struggling, but Esme didn't trust a crew of witches to help them. "We need to get her to a bed!" Esme snaps, and Carlisle looks at Alice, keening pathetically, gaze out to the land.

"You promised Edward you would help." Carlisle reminds her. Alice turns to him, eyes as wide as an owl's, and scurried over to them. She takes Michael, and throws him over her shoulder. He's almost a whole foot taller than her, because she was very little, but it seems to give her no pains. Alice darts down the gangway just as it is placed, the man limp and dazed.

The crew curse after her, but she drops the feeble man into the sand and goes to her valiantly fighting brother.

Carlisle and Esme forced themselves to take their time down the gangway with a moaning Isabelle. Edward's actions were no longer their concern. When they reach dry land, Michael is shaky, but on his feet.

"That young woman is stronger than she looks." He tells them all as they stop, smiling at his wife. He seems to have not noticed the commotion on the beach, or his wife's condition; there was still a vagueness in his eyes. Carlisle looks to where Edward struggles with this Jacob.

Edward was yowling and spitting like a cat, hands grappling with the brown man. The man in turn held his own, face fierce and drawn. They dart and swing around each other, but not just anyone fights against a fae for as long as this. His ears are furred and sharp, his teeth along with them. But for all these wolfish features, his nails are tipped with something that glimmers gold.

"Should I help the boy, dear?" Carlisle asks his wife. The midwife frowns at the fight, her eyes calculating.

"He doesn't need help." She said. It seemed true; while the sand sprayed up around them, Edward seemed less and less likely to have the upper-hand. "Help the crew with my trunk." She tells her husband instead, and with a nod, he goes.

There's a haze over Michael's eyes as he smiles dimly at Esme. "I'm going to be a father!" He announces victoriously.

Esme knows what a fairy-glamour looked like, though, and can only smile politely at the dazed man. "No, dear, you are not." She tells him, her tone pityingly grave, and to this he nods amicably.

The fight between this man, Jacob, and Edward, is heated, but almost sparring. Maria watches as her crew unloads.

With a thump of air and a choked howl, Edward was pinned to the sand. Jacob grimaces down at him.

"I know why you're here, you evil fuck." The man snarled, eyeing Edward's stretched, gaping face with triumph. "And it's not for me." He adds.

With a grunt, he gets off the fae and looks to its 'sister'. Edward's eyes stay trained on the man, but he doesn't move. But Alice stands, face unworried by her brother in the sand, eyes waiting and watching. She looked scared.

"Better to come along." Jacob tells her, and sets off to the ship. Isabelle watches him approach, her face tight with worry. Next to her, her husband seems much less fettered, gazing dreamily at his wife.

Jacob smiles at Isabelle as he stops in front of her. "Are you alright?" She asks him breathlessly. His gaze on her was fond, and sad.

"Are you?" He asks in return. Before she could answer, she grunts, and doubles over in pain as another contraction wracks through her. Michael pets her hand, cooing soothingly.

"Who is this?" Jacob asks, his gaze on Esme.

"Esme Platt, I'm her midwife." Esme says sedately. But there was something in her manner that implied this man made her very nervous indeed.

Jacob looks at her coldly. "I'm sorry, I don't speak seal." He tells her, and pushes her aside to take Isabelle's right arm.

"Looks as though you've made it with no time to spare." He says to his friend mildly, and takes Isabelle into his arms easily.

"Careful! That's my wife and babe!" Michael tells him, sounding vaguely cross as he sways on his feet.

Jacob looks at him oddly. "Why is this man in a trance?" He asks, but it seemed he didn't particularly want this question answered, as he immediately nods to Esme. "You can drag him along, then." He says and off he walks.

Esme spares her husband a glance, seeing him directing the sea-witches over where to put their luggage. He meets her gaze with a small smile.

"Go on, darling! We've almost finished!" Carlisle calls to her pleasantly, and it did not seem as though he was referring to the crew's unloading.

Esme nods, and the small group tromps away.

Edward peels himself from the sand, and slinks over to the heap of shit that the witches lug out of the Forks room. Carlisle doesn't pay him much mind, eyes on Nettie, and the small, plain brown trunk she carried down the plank.

Edward begins to dig in one of the sacks of trash, and pulls out several items, while several more simply slip out of their own volition. Carlisle glances over, and pauses.

"What have you got there, Edward?" He asks the thing pleasantly, walking over and crouching in the sand with him.

Edward pulls out a flat wooden piece of bark, with a sigil burnt into it. In a circle, two canine creatures bare their fangs. It was the design that Carlisle absently noted tattooed on the man, Jacob's, shoulder.

Edward brings the wood close to his face, and eats it. It crumbles and crackled under his jaws, but only a short time passes until its gone.

While Edward eats it, Carlisle stares, slightly shocked. Nettie frowns at the man's distraction, and glances down at the trunk as she places it on the floor.

"It has rare instruments inside!" Lucy coos mockingly.

Her words make Nettie's frown deepen. This box was old, and rickety. No one would put something expensive inside a container that looked as though it would fall apart if set down too roughly. "Let us see." She decides, and hunkers down. With her fingers glowing blue, Nettie grasps the lock and rips it off.

Carlisle watches Edward pick at the splinters in his teeth with his long tongue. "Why did you do that?" He asks, puzzled.

Edward growls, the eyes he sets on Carlisle bright green and slitted like a cat's. "Because I will eat his heart." He promises.

Something else falls out of the haphazardly stuffed sack.

Carlisle frowns as it, then, he snatches the sack and yanks it away from Edward roughly. Edward yowls, and claws at Carlisle's arm to retrieve it, leaving him with long bloody scrapes. But Carlisle doesn't heed him, and finally unearths Edward's stolen prizes.

"Why did you keep these!?" Carlisle demanded, rounding on Edward in mournful fury.

Edward scowls, and slinks away just a little. "Because his captivity matters not to me. I shan't care if that ship is his fate." Edward hisses, his eyes mean and cruel. Carlisle stares, slack-jawed, at the items, and his hands tremble, holding something so precious.

Nettie gasps at what was revealed in the battered box. "_Captina!_" Nettie screams.

The scream catches Carlisle's attention, as he stuffs the treasures back in the bag. But when he realizes what Nettie has done, he yells, running at her.

"No! How dare you!" He cries, his tone both panicked and furious.

But he isn't fast enough, and Maria reaches the box first, and when she sees it, she smirks, and pulls out the selkie cloak. Carlisle stops dead, eyes wide and chest heaving.

"Please …" he whispers quietly.

"Well, well … I finally know who freed my fae." Maria announces with a wicked glint in her eyes.

* * *

Jacob carries a perspiring Isabelle down through a barely-beaten path. Esme takes Michael arm and tugging him after them as he stumbles along.

"I'm sorry I've come." Isabelle mutters through gritted teeth as Jacob walks down a little sandy path from the beach to the flat almost-forest. "Why did Edward attack you?" She asks.

Jacob glances over his shoulder. Both Fork siblings were gone from where he'd knocked the not-quite-man to the sand. He glances up the path, and sees the littler one standing next to a tree, watching for them.

"How did he lure you? Out into the stars?" He muses aloud, his tone casual, though his legs carry them swiftly. "I always thought you were a grounded girl."

Bella hiccups some type of laugh. "I am! I met him on land. He can switch; legs, fins, wings."

Jacob decides, "Well that clears it up then. If he's anything like the rest of them, well, some of them, then he wants to eat my heart." He tells her. "They think it may make them immune to iron and silver – it will not." He says, voice hushed and amused.

Isabelle looks alarmed. "I'd have made him wait at home if that were his intensions!" She cries. Jacob glances down at her, his eyes troubled and dark.

"I'll miss you, old friend." He tells her quietly.

"I've missed you too." Bella breathlessly replies.

* * *

They reach a small grouping of buildings, and it seemed completely empty. Jacob isn't bothered by this and takes them straight into a low, flat house.

He sets Isabelle down, and Esme has Michael sit in a corner of the room. It was only one room; with a bed, and a table and two chairs. Little, bare furnishings, one small window built next to the door.

"My grandfather would not allow you any further into the village." He explains to Esme, "We have children here." He adds, his tone apologetic, but reasonable.

Esme ignores this, and goes to Isabelle on the bed. "I need boiled water, and rags." She tells him.

"I have them ready," Jacob nods to the items next to the bed, and goes to the fire. Michael is sitting, in his stupor, pleasantly watching the flames.

"I'm to be a father!" He tells Jacob as the man takes a large iron kettle off of the heath.

"He isn't." It was Edward's voice, face awful and twisted in the window. "Let me in." His words reveal a long, flicking tongue.

Jacob looks slightly annoyed. "No." The man replies curtly.

Edward's face vanishes from the window, and the door latch rattles. Not unnaturally so, but as if the fae intended to invite himself in. The scream of pain that follows, though, is an unnatural sound. Jacob only smirks, as Esme jumps in fright, and Michael gazes lethargically at the door.

Isabelle scrambled frantically at the covers as Esme did away with her loose gown. "You'll need to let him in, Jake!" She insisted, her tone horse, "… He's the baby's father." She says this much quieter, worried brown eyes on her vague-eyed husband.

Jacob didn't seem amused; his lip curled up with obvious disgust. "You're in no position to make requests, Bella." He says to her, hard and unyielding.

Esme is between the woman's legs, her face calm and serious. "My husband must be allowed entry." She tells him over her shoulder, but the foreign tone is nervousness is apparent as she addresses the man. It seemed now more than ever; Jacob frightened her.

Jacob, for his part, seemed unconcerned. "There's nothing to stop a _human_ from walking through my door." He tells her stonily.

Esme nods once, understanding that she herself was trapped inside, and turns back to the task at hand. "Isabelle, we have a job to do now, you and I." Her tone was kinder, now, than it ever had been for the entirety of the trip. A woman was in labor, and Esme was exactly where she had been so many times before. "You will need to push soon."

* * *

Maria jerks her head to the Fork's trash heap. "Fae do love their nests." She sneers, eyes on Jasper, stoic as stone. "Glad I never let _him_ call _my_ ship home." She says. Sharp, cunning eyes cut to Carlisle. "We shall be so kind as to make a delivery." She says, her smirk sends a shiver of urgency up Carlisle's spine.

"I think not." He says stiffly. He raises his last resort – the pistol that had been traded for a magic watch. "I do not believe in violence – but above all else, I believe in Esme's right to be free. Please do not make me do anything we shall both regret." He states calmly.

Maria's eyes are cold, though the smile fades from her face. "We shall see." She regards him calmly, standing her ground. She heads once. "Fire."

Carlisle's mouth tightened. He took a deep breath. Socking the gun causes a humming, as the green charge shoots up along the barrel. "Very well." The trigger is pulled. There's a fizzle and a hollow, almost coughing sound, the green charge flickers and drops to red immediately. Carlisle gasps. "Empty!" He cries.

"I believe I told you, fisherman's boy – I did not use it often." Nettie retorts, a grin spreading across her face. Maria also barks out a harsh laugh at the display.

Carlisle felt a surge of fury at their ruthlessness, and threw down the gun. He leapt at the captain, every intention to pry the cloak from her fingers, if he must.

But a life of pleasant passivity did not make heroes. Nettie clicks her fingers – the blue electricity not an arrow, but a spark that crackles to the selkie's spouse and he falls.

Crying out as the sharp throbbing pain courses through his body, Carlisle gasps in the dirt, his vision blurred.

"Now that you have sufficiently wasted our time – let us be off!"


	7. A Dance Between A Fae and Fire

Jacob had excused himself quite early in the process; he'd seen babies born before, it was nothing he needed to see again. Especially not under these circumstances.

He goes outside, and comes toe-to-toe with Edward. His face is less human on land; he wasn't much taller, but his limbs still seemed unnecessarily long and crooked, his entire body pointed and angled.

"That is mine." Edward hisses, too-large eyes looking hungrily at the cabin. "Let me in."

Jacob seems at best, irritated, and at worst, very bored. "You'd better not quarrel with me, ugly." He says shortly, glancing over the fae's shoulder to where he sees something that causes his mouth to purse. "Your energy would be best spent on those witches coming now." He tells it, nodding over Edward's spiky shoulder.

Edward turns and there was Maria and her crew, marching up the path. Nettie, Lucy, Peter and Charlotte make a grim party towards him.

Jasper and Carlisle were with them, both looking extremely unhappy. In Maria's fist, there was an extraordinary cloth; silvery and shifting like liquid. It was made of fur – selkie fur.

"What is the meaning of this?" Edward demanded. With this distraction, Jacob slips back into the house, closing the door firmly behind him.

Maria smirks, and with a nod, all the treasures the Forks had made a nest of is dumped onto the ground. Edward hisses as his precious items crash to the floor. "I offered my crew's services to bring your trash to you, and this is my thanks?" She simpered. Her feet were planted, though unsteady on land after so much skylarking. This was the captain of a ship and the leader of the witch's coven.

"Leave." Edward growls, growing taller than even the little hut and snarls down at the group. The doctor's husband seems awed by the height, and quietly exclaims to God.

Maria rolls her shoulders. "Or what?" She challenges. "The placenta of a changeling childe is one of the rarest ingredients in the world." She argues. "It's the least you could offer in return for your safe passage here." She added.

Edward's red mouth swings open, his tongue long and pointed. "I'll eat it myself, I will drink every ounce of the afterbirth." He replies. One long, pointed claw flicks over to Jasper, whose head was bowed. "Witch, I am not that trapped thing; you will get nothing from me." He says mockingly.

"We will see." Maria replies calmly, selkie cloak in her fist, and a coven of space-witches at her back.

* * *

Esme's back was tense, and her eyes shifted to the door and back to the woman on the bed. They could hear most of the conversation, and Jake had told Esme quite dispassionately; 'they have something of yours, seal.' The words had made Esme's blood run cold, but she couldn't be distracted from Bella now. Even if she needs to know whether they have her cloak, or her husband.

"I've had quite enough of witches." Isabelle mutters tersely.

"Haven't we all." Michael agrees airily, feeding some more wood onto the smoldering fire.

"What _are_ you?" Esme asks, her eyes now on Jacob, who was kneeling by the bed, petting the sweat from Bella's forehead fondly.

Jacob seems bored by the question. "Nothing you know of." He replies vaguely. "The witches, I gather, are here for the placenta?" He asks, his tone becoming a little more judgmental, as though he blamed Esme for this development.

"I will eat it!" Isabelle offered, her tone heavy and frantic. Jacob hummed in disapproval, and Michael gave a weak chuckle but did not turn to look at them.

"… They have my cloak." Esme says, the tone mostly frightened, but almost a question.

Jake inclines his head. "You'd best get that back." He agrees.

Esme shuts her mouth with a savage snap, and ignores the dribble of blood that seeps out of the corner of her lips from her own sharp teeth. "Isabelle," Esme says, turning to the withering girl, her now sharp fangs mangling the name in her mouth, "you need to get ready to push again,"

* * *

Edward snarls and spits at them, and stands right in front of the door to the little cabin. Carlisle watches, grasping at one of Edward's sacks, his worried eyes constantly drifting to the precious cloak in Maria's grip. His gaze shifts to Jasper, who stares, forlorn, at the ground. He followed along, knowing that he was essentially a prisoner until he was able to get his wife's cloak back, as they would very gladly make a prisoner of her. Carlisle only had to look as far as Jasper to see that.

_If anything should happen to her …. _Carlisle thinks, face furrowed with anguish.

"Captain, you must understand," He beseeched, his voice thin and horse, "my wife and I are only helping a young girl, you'll get nothing keeping her cloak like this." He reasoned.

Maria barely spared him a glance. "I believe I will. I am sure the seal would be willing to trade." She replied, clipped, and turns her shoulder to him again.

Carlisle felt a surge of anger rise in him then. He would not allow Esme's fate to be treated so callously. "She will not have to." He replied darkly.

Maria scoffs, and Carlisle rips up the canvas sack. He digs furiously, and pulls out several things.

One heavily stained cloth wrapped around a lump. One rum bottle, a third of the way full of a dark, thick liquid. Two lacy curtains.

"Is that supposed to scare us?" Lucy sneered.

Carlisle looks at her coldly. "No, it's supposed to give him hope." He replies.

Jasper makes a strangled, keening gurgle in his throat. He dived madly for what Carlisle holds in his hands, face starved and wild. For his wings, his voice, his power.

Maria slaps Jasper across the face, blue lighting streaking over his form as he shudders to the ground. She looks furious, and glares murderously at Carlisle.

Carlisle only frowns in return. "What will it be?" He asks her. "Is some girl's afterbirth worth more than the boy?" He looks to his wife's cloak meaningfully.

Maria's grip tightens on the fabric. "Yes."

* * *

"Dear, the baby's almost here, I can just feel it!" Esme declares, as Bella huffs and groans above her.

"Oh, happy!" Michael cries out, eyes still fixed on the fireplace, and Jacob glances uncertainly to the door, as he crouches behind Bella to prop her up.

"I can't keep going!" Bella cries, looking and feeling wrecked. Esme tuts, and Jacob wipes the matted hair from the girl's brow.

"Yes you can." She replies steadily.

There's a strange, strangled sound from outside, and Jake pries himself carefully off the bed. "Can you help her alone?" He asks, eyes on Esme. Michael may well be in the room, but it was obvious he was beyond help.

"No!" Bella shouts, clinging to the man with such ardent despair that she almost comes off the bed with him as he steps away. "Oh, Jake, please don't leave!" She begged with tears dripping down her face.

Esme grabs at her knees and pulls her back. "Bella, you need to calm down!" She snaps sternly.

Jake gathered her up in his arms and presses her back onto the bed. "Bella, there are happenings outside the door that need my attention." He explains gently, and leans down to press his lips to her forehead. "Friend, I could be very mad indeed that you brought witches and fae to my home, but I'll forgive you, just this once." His tone was light and tender, but his eyes were grave.

He looks at Esme, dithering for a moment. "Go, we will manage." She assures him.

He doesn't look assured, and glances once more around the tiny room. It wasn't leaving Bella in her time of need that made him pause, but leaving her with Esme. After a long moment, he nods once, and darts out the door.

* * *

Maria looks at the items with feigned disinterest. But the vein pulsing in her neck belayed her charade. "Even if you free him, what will you do then?" Maria asks, looking at Jasper's prone form as he began to stir slightly. "He will not fight for you," she continued, her tone advising, "and two against five is hardly impressive." She said with a nasty grin. For a moment, Carlisle isn't sure who the second is, until Edward snaps his sharp teeth together with a heavier sound than a human jaw would make.

"Forget me, witch?" It was Alice who speaks, slinking from behind the hut Bella labors in; no taller, but even longer than before.

Maria sneers. But three against five may well even the odds.

The cabin door opens, and a tall, dark man steps out. His expression was stern, as he surveys the gathering. When all eyes are on him, he smiles.

"You speak about a fight as though it may take place wherever you please." He says, his grin almost a touch too wide at the edges, his teeth slightly too pointed.

Among the witches there is a resounding crackle of electricity; they were preparing to fight. "And who, pray tell, are you?" Maria asks in a growl.

The man looks to the tree line behind the coven. "It's no matter." He replies, and shouts; "_Samuel!_"

The rumbling sounds like a faraway earthquake, and the rustling of the leaves are ominous in the air. The four gathered witches turn, and are confronted with wolves. Five huge, menacing beasts; with eyes glinting with more than the regular intelligence.

The man's voice is a deep growl, and the air around him shimmers with heat. "All you need to know is that I have taken up my great-grandfather's mantel." He tells Maria. "And that is unfortunate for you." He begins shaking so hard, he falls apart; explodes into teeth and fur and terror.

The wolf crouches low, larger than the man that had stood there. It bares its teeth and moves forward.

It gives a long howl before charging, and as one, the wolves descend on the collected witches, snarling jowls and wicked claws.

* * *

"Captina!" Her First mate yelled as they fled, throwing blue lightening like stones behind them. "We lost the fae, and the placenta!" She snarled.

Maria sent her a quelling look. "_I know_." She said heavily. They were at the shoreline, so close, so close to surviving. "It's no matter, we have our coven. We will _rally_, and find ourselves something or someone anew." She promises. The howls and barking of wolves were coming closer and closer. "To the sky, as always."

Maria steps onto her ship, and knows they are safe. Wood carved by her own hands, each piece as sure and hers as her blood and sinew. But the wolves' howls were still ringing in her ears.

"We must flee as fast as we can!" Nettie demanded, looking back at their path with a wild gaze; at the wolves pawing at the shorelines. The crew are spurred into action – preparing to flee for their lives. They had barely escaped them; blue fire crackled like a brewing storm and the wolves were hot on their trail in their retreat.

Maria ran to the prow of the ship, and to the figurehead.

"_Now, dear one, sing!_" Maria whispers.

The figurehead, and her ghastly face, creaks to life, the wood warping and stretching. Groaning with the effort of the worn and beloved wood. She opens her mouth, and an ethereal scream issues forth. The wolves cease snarling, and whimper and jostle each other on the sand.

Maria grins with all her teeth. "A siren's call may lead you to the depths of the sky, but a witch's cackle can spell your doom any way it pleases." She hisses.

The Greyhound sets sail, as it always will. Even if it disintegrates, one fateful day; it would rise again as a ghost ship, forever skimming the wine-red cosmos.

* * *

Carlisle stares after the wolves, before snapping out of his stupor. Quickly, he snatches up his wife's cloak, thrown aside by Maria. He drapes it protectively over his shoulders and sighs with relief. He was not the villain in a tale – his wife's cloak was her own, and he had returned it thrice over to prove it.

He looks to Edward, slowing shrinking to a human-shaped height. He looks to Jasper, watching the fleeing witches, and his own clouded eyes fall to the items on the ground, as though suspicious.

"I would not question good fortune." Carlisle advises him gently.

Jasper dives at the items, hungry, hissing. He rips at the oily cloth – inside it his power.

Carlisle gasps; a human-shaped heart, black and rotting. Jasper unhinges his jaw like a snake and shoves it into his mouth, lips working steadily to consume it. Edward watches with the fascination of one who had never been so desperate, a hysterically cruel smile twisting crookedly over his fangs.

As Jasper scrambles in the dirt, his heart sinking visibly down his throat, he gives a groan, unable, it seems, to keep himself upright.

"I knew it," Alice calls dreamily, looking proud and pleased, "he's _beautiful_."

His skin is loose and papery, as an onion peels, it falls from him in dry, cracked sheets. His hair slithered from his scalp, growing longer, and the dry ends crumbling into dust. The sinew underneath his skin bubbled, filling out and lengthening.

"Good heavens," Carlisle murmured, transfixed by the horrific transformation.

Jasper panted harshly with the exertion, face-down in the dirt, unmoving except for his heaving torso. After a moment, he unstops the wine bottle, and drinks his voice desperately.

"_I am no longer a caged bird, fly, fly, I will fly_." Came his garbled, unused voice, as he begins shrieking nonsensically, overjoyed to be able to make such a sound again. He stands on shaky legs and grasps the curtains as he drags himself up.

Alice skips up to him then, smiling merrily as she reaches out for the wings in his hands.

"He might eat you," Edward reminds his sister lazily, head canted to the side with intense interest at the display. But Jasper allows her to take them from him and Alice goes to his back, stuffing them against his shoulder blades.

"Remade, entirely …." Carlisle breathes in wonder.

* * *

There was a roughly-made wooden cross sticking out on the ground, over a small lump of up-turned dirt. "Our child, gone …." Michael says sadly, his eyes wet with tears. His shoulders were slumped, and his posture defeated.

Bella pets the arm squeezing her shoulders with pity. She was still weak on her feet from the pregnancy, and lent heavily against the man. "I'm so sorry we came all this way," she tells him quietly.

Michael shakes his head, his gaze forlorn but subdued. "No, I …" he clears his throat, "I'm glad your friend could be here." He says, nodding once to Jacob. He nods back, standing on Bella's other side, but makes no other movement and shows no expression. Esme and Carlisle stand on Michael's side; Michael thanked Esme for the extra effort of wearing a fine Sunday cloak to bury the stillborn infant.

"You're a good man, Michael." Carlisle tells him softly. While Michael seems to acknowledge the generality of his words, he is the only one who misses their true meaning. They stand in front of the empty grave, and only one person mourns.

Soft murmuring floats towards them, and with it the Forks siblings. They both hold something; one a jar of water, black peppercorn wiggling inside, and one is holding a wrapped-up bundle.

Alice was cooing to what was in Edward's arms. "Such a sweet thing!" She simpered. "Let's feed them another tadpole!" She sings, fishing out a black slimy creature and dropping it in the blankets.

Isabella rips herself away from her husband, rushing to the pair with frantic speed. "_What_ are you doing!?" She demanded, eye wide as she glanced back at her husband, with his head bowed. "He'll see her!" She hisses.

Edward tilts his chin, gazing at her serenely. "He will not." The thing replies, and slithers up to the man, the bundle firm in his arms. "Michael, this stone is quite heavy, would you help me carry it?" He asks.

The blankets shift, and the baby blinks up at him; no sclera, just black, black eyes. Michael looks down at it, blankly, before shaking his head. "Ah, don't bother me with that …" he said, voice sad and plaintive. He steps past Edward, and grips Isabelle's shoulder. "I'm going fishing, love." He told her.

"He can't see her." Bella whispers. She watches as her humble, human husband, goes towards the shore. It seems everyone had forgotten of the _Greyhound_, gone before Bella could sit up again. But that had been five days ago, and she was healed enough to walk.

"Bella!" It was Jacob, walking after her. The several other buildings were still empty; Jacob explained that they had decided to go further inland, the east, until the visitors left. He looks to Edward, who licks his lips. Warily, he steps carefully next to his friend. "Why do you keep this type of company still?" He asks her tersely. "Your debt is paid."

Bella takes his elbow and pets it gently. "Jacob … it's not so simple." She whispers, tone guileless and full of honey. "Edward and I; we're returning to the fairy realm. I'm to be one of them." She said it with reverence.

"No you're not!" Jacob snapped, but she shakes her head and drops her grip as she turns her face away. "But, what of Michael?" He asks, face crumpling.

"He was only to appease my mother!" Bella explained, plaintive but firm. "He'll make a good human woman's husband someday." She continued certainly. With that, she coos at the bundle, and takes the quiet baby gently away, leaving Edward gripping nothing but the blanket. She walks towards the house and at his wife's look, Carlisle joins her. Alice waved them off merrily.

"She feeds her still, though the baby bites clean through her teat." Alice explains. "The blood is additional nourishment."

Jacob looks not at the man and his doomed friend, but Michael, artless and mourning a child that wasn't his, and wasn't even dead. Esme comes to his side, her cloak wrapped tightly around her shoulders. "We'll help him annul the marriage when we get home," She explains gently. But Jake does not look at all assured, "we'll say she fell off the cliffs in her despair over losing the child." She said with conviction that came from something deeper than care for the foolish girl who went into a fairy ring.

Gleeful, Alice dances towards the tree and beckons. Jasper steps out, free of human contact, and joins her. Maria was gone far away, and it seemed he preferred Alice's company to all else. He was reborn; as his old friend Emmett before him; his old husk shed; his teeth set. He was as incorrectly handsome as they all were; and all the fouler for it. There was a broken sheen about his skin; as though he could not entirely be new again But now, he steps after Alice's every step, and almost seems to smile.

Edward hummed lazily as he flipped over the blanket, revealing the gurgling, bright-eyed babe.

Scowling, Jacob looks sharply at Bella, mindlessly rocking a stone, under Carlisle's tense supervision.

Alice casts a look back at her. "She believes she is coming with us!" She declares, her mouth turned down into a frown, before breaking out in a sunny smile.

"What do you mean?" Jacob demands.

Esme, as well, looks immediately concerned. "What were the particulars of her debt?" She asks the little one, who sniffs once, and twists her head up, not in distain, but to watch the purple ink of the sky.

"Not of my concern …." She murmurs dreamily, and against all protestations, she slinks back into the shadows, at home in the play of light and dark, as were the stars.

* * *

Carlisle was beloved of one fae. The selkie woman that gifted to him her precious cloak. He had passed all trials for it; and so never would he own it. Three times, she flung it to him, three times, returned to its mistress. He would guard it, with his life, his wife's tethered freedom.

A humble fisherman's boy, but fair, and gentler than even the winds when in pansy-like calm. He found himself _tolerated_, more than most, by the cosmos-swimming creatures. "Edward, joy to you, your child." He says to the angular long youth, in his spidery-fingers, holding a rosy-cheeked babe with a mouth full of fangs.

Edward hummed, all paternal attention on the fledgling larvae. Carlisle watched the display of affection, and asks quietly. "The deal – what was the arrangement?"

Edward opened his mouth, and seemed to shrink slightly, to the lanky young dandy he may have once been, but was no longer. "She would lay with me, and give me a child …" Edward sighs, bouncing the softly hissing babe in his arms, "and I would tell her that I love her, forever and ever."

Carlisle pauses, and for a moment, the expression of devastation takes his face. "… That does not sound as though you mean to make her one of you." He whispers, anguished, for the beguiled young woman, mother to a halfling.

Edward inclines his head serenely. "It does not." He agrees, breathy, as he promises his little caterpillar fine bone to teethe on, and the whole expanse of the Etherium to swim.

* * *

Bella was determined, to meet him as he asked. In a green-sour ringlet, on a planet dear to her. With the man dearer to her than any. "Edward!" She calls, and she feels as though her waning, adrift moon has found again her natural orbit. "My love, you've come back to me. I was so frightened on that ship; you weren't acting at all like yourself …." She grasps at his shirt, tightly, so as not to lose him again. His eyes were glittering green again, his hands, larger than hers, but by the normal amount.

He smiles crookedly at her. "No one followed you?" He asks her gently, his fingers trailed into her hair, tucking it back behind her ears. "Sweet strawberries." He murmurs fondly.

Bella finds herself drinking him in so entirely she can barely think of what she must say. "No, dearest. We're alone."

"Well, perhaps I should hold up my end of the bargain?" He asked with a chuckle, and she nods with reverence. The reward at the end of their long journey. The lasting ever after. "I love you, forever and ever."

But like a spell that had been broken, he steps away again, leaving her empty arms, so much colder now, to fall limply to her sides. "But … where are you going?" She asks, watching, in dawning horror, as his eyes shift, feline slits, and he is lost to her again.

"To eat a wolf's heart." Edward replies, his mouth devoid of flat teeth, and he is gliding over the grass and dew, gravity bending a body that has barely known it. "To no longer bow to iron!" He declares, hungry green gaze. "Ascend above the grasp of silver," he hisses.

Bella watches, mouth agape, as he thrashes the air, only the tips of his toes touching the ground, as though he would fly away. "No … no!" She shouts. "You _promised_ me! You were supposed to be _mine_!"

Her broken words pause him, but he barely marks her again.

"Not at all, my love." He purrs, words garbled by his jowls, as though he were underwater, "I _promised_ "I shall tell you of my own love, forever and ever"." He snaps his teeth, the thick, snap heavier than a human jaw would be. "Your dear friend will be naught but a bonus."

He is in the trees before Bella can stumble from the ring, her heart racing as she struggles to follow him. Desperately, she calls; "_No_ – Jacob!"

* * *

They had no vessel to leave, and so sat, stranded in a temporary isolation. Michael was content in his mournful fishing, needing no company or distractions. But Esme and Carlisle held no such calm; they were anxious to be off. Back home, or anywhere they could be, if only they had the means.

Their concerns were met in a surprising place. Michael called them to the beach, under no haze, but blind to concern. "They're back again. Those sirens." He explains blankly.

The doctor and her fisherman meet them, seeing two figures on the sand. Jacob follows, protective of his shores. Having shimmied and swam through the atmosphere to the water, as they could not touch land before wetting their fins. It was not all four that terrorized the Greyhound, but the Fair Unknown, yellower and rounded than the Denali three, and a newcomer. That which was once Emmett. Liquid and languid, he clutches in his webbed fingers a rope that leads to a small boat, bobbing peacefully along the way.

Carlisle's kind smile appears. "You are still the Fair Unknown?" He asks her, his tone turning to hope next; "Or are you Rosalie again?"

"I suppose one word is easier." The Fair Known Rosalie replies, and points to the vessel in her mate's hand. "A fisherman's boy needs a boat." She tells them.

"We fetched one!" The fresh Emmett replies cheerfully.

Esme exchanged a startled look with her husband, before she smiles. Home at last.

"Thank you," she tells Rosalie, and turns to Jacob, who stood silent next to her. "… Thank you for your time." She says. He inclines his head.

They set about to leave immediately. The deal had been done; they had no more business here.

But a being comes from the trees with haste, skimming the ground until he collides with Emmett.

"Hello, old friend!" Emmett booms, and the two crewmates begin a stomping little dance, both joyous to see one another again. Jasper grins like a boy.

"Hello to you as well!" Jasper replies, and the men cheer at the sound of his reclaimed voice.

"It is home time?" Alice asks, skipping lightly after the doctor, collecting up her substantial junk to tuck away in the boat. "I have tadpoles enough for the sweet spawn," she's proud to explain.

Michael watches with a flicker of interest. "So they're all to go?" he asks Jake, who nods once. "My poor wife will be sorry to see them depart." He explains with a sigh.

Jacob watches the two stomping creatures, the slick little thing bent over the halfling. "You speak for her alone." He says, eyes narrow.

* * *

The theft of fire from Powers Higher spurred the creation of civilizations.

Of the world, and worlds.

From the solar powered sails of ships that skim through the winds, absorbing the brilliance of suns.

From animals and ancient heroes, who stole from Gods, who fell from Heaven – all for fire.

* * *

Jacob watches the preparations, and is glad for the beginning of his own normalcy. He does not notice the shadow.

It is Michael who calls out; "Edward! You're set to leave!" He raises a hand, and gives a startled shout at the figure that appears.

When the creature who was once Edward, now elongated and twisted, hissed and flicked out a snake tongue, having found his prey. Having found a fire-keeper.

He clashed with Jacob, a battle of hissing and low growls. Bright death, they rip apart, Jacob to avoid teeth, Edward to avoid the sharp bite of a carefully-made knife. Silver blade with iron handle.

Michael is ushered away by the fisherman, and the fae, in their curious patience, watch on in silence.

Jacob grins, they meet again. His vigor was furious, as flames ate through dry wood. Edward moved liquid, not like water, but oil. Heavy and slick; he could not be pinned down, or contained in one hand.

Seven Pleiades sisters guided Jacob's hand, silver forged in fire, and everything that could slice through sprites.

The blades flashes, slices in between Edward's ribs, to dart out again as quickly. Edward howls, shrinking again to a dandy, and wobbles on his feet. The stuff that spreads through his shirtwaist is a heavy glittering ichor, that drips like honey. He falls.

"I never loose, not to the likes of you." Jacob declared, rash wanton victory. He kicks at the defeated creature, growling; "Get off my planet!"

* * *

Alice helps her brother to his feet, and Jasper takes the man's uninjured side to drag him to the boat. They make a strange company. Rosalie and Emmett were on-board already, with Edward's limp body being dragged over the railing, with Alice and Jasper joining them.

But Bella breaks out of the trees, then, tumbling forward as she calls out for her friend. "Are you hurt!" She demands as Jacob pulls her upright. He shows his unblemished figure with some pride, his knife still dripping gold.

Bella leaves him, pushing him away and lurching forward to the boat. "Edward, my love, wait, wait …" she murmurs, brown eyes full of beguiled love. "You haven't taken me yet, you haven't taken me with you."

Not dead, the man throws himself up against the railings, his teeth again fangs. "And I shan't!" He declares. "'Then we will have the child together, and I will tell you I love you, forever and ever.' That was our deal, that was carried out.

"If I cannot suck the marrow from his bones, then there is no reason to keep myself from my beloved stars." He slips from the railing, disappearing onboard.

Esme stops her, as Bella attempts to crawl the gangplank. She shushes and tuts and soothes, and passes the distraught woman to her husband, who takes her gently, and leads her back to the shore.

Alice has a large grey stone swaddled tightly in a blanket. "Come, sweet little fingerling!" She cooes. Jake can hear a baby's gurgle, but sees nothing but a rock. "To the skies!"

The ebbing Neptune calls all those who don't breathe air. They set sail; the incongruous creatures. There are no more good-byes, the land settles, again, a planet at ease with its welkin.

Bella sobs into her friend's neck, and lets out long-broken mutterings; "N-no … what am I to do …? Jake, I don't … my heart …. What have I done ….."

Michael watches at her shoulder, looking helpless at her despair, and Jacob's arms are warm, and he consoles her gently; "Hush now, friend, hush …."

* * *

It is Bella's mother who comes for them, only three days after. Steady and quiet; Bella shuffles after her husband, after her mother. A kiss good-bye to her dearest friend for his trouble, a promise to visit, to write letters, to remain tethered, across the Etherium.

Her mother speaks tearfully of having dealt with the nursery, tucked it up and away, and Michael revels in homecoming; though dreads the sickness. Not knowing that this trip will be like all his others; his stomach steady and head clear.

None of them notice, clutched tightly in Bella's hand, a small veil that belonged to a selkie doctor, collected from the knife of a fire-keeper - the blood of a fairy that had made her all his, and remained not hers.


End file.
